


Prospero's Herald

by darkrabbit



Series: Life with Theta [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), The Pendergast Novels
Genre: FBI, M/M, Male Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-09
Updated: 2010-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-12 13:15:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 25,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/125208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkrabbit/pseuds/darkrabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My version of the eleventh Doctor -envisioned before Matt Smith's name was announced- is pregnant with triplets by Jack. But something comes up, and he is forced to call on an old friend for help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Leiningen Versus the Mote, or, What Became of Testimony

**Author's Note:**

> Okay... I do not claim to own any of Doctor Who. Never have. Never will. Although, it might be nice to kidnap David Tennant... heheh.
> 
> Also, in some of my works, especially this series, I like to mention my favorite songs, plays, movies and such. If I have somehow missed that any of this is in violation of some copyright, I apologize and will alter the offending part or remove the fic. I don't want trouble!!!
> 
> Also, this three part series contains copious -and obscure!- references to Classic Doctor Who, as well as various mythological and philosophical references.

“So what did you end up doing with the erm, Dangerous Tibetan Artifact, hrm?” the Doctor said, steadying his gaze in a pointed look at the albino.

 

Aloysius X. Leng Pendergast just smiled. And just like the Doctor’s, it was a smile that hadn’t yet reached his eyes.

 

“Oh, I have my ways. Rest assured, Doctor. The tapestry is... doubly safe.”

 

His fingers quivered a fraction as he set his teacup down on the slim little saucer, a subconscious reaction the Time Lord found painfully familiar.

 

“Only doubly? Well, that’s good to hear, at least. But the image is still in your head, isn’t it? What are we going to do about _that,_ hrm?”

 

The albino merely flexed his fingers in a pyramid beneath his chin at the notion, like a languid genius concocting some great bit of trouble.

 

“Do I hear an offer of reprieve, Doctor? And while we are on the subject, are you in any condition to be offering? You _are_ pregnant with triplets, as I recall.”

 

“Ahhh. You’re getting fresh in your old age,” Theta Sigma said, dropping a hand to his skinny stomach.

 

“Why, my dear Doctor, _whenever_ have I _not_ been?”

 

The maverick FBI agent’s silver-blue eyes sparkled merrily, like two frost-tipped sapphires.

 

“Oh, yes. You’ve always been cheeky, even for a genius. Course I’m smarter than you, but that can’t be helped. I’m smarter than everyone.”

 

His face brightened, his own manner taking on its usual cheek, and soon the mood was light again.

 

“Ah, guys?” Jack said, as though he were just coming into the room, “... I’m still here, ya know!”

 

The Time Lord started at this, while the agent merely took his time and turned carefully in Jack’s direction.

 

“Not... trying to interrupt the reunion, but, don’t we have a serious issue to take care of? You know, like, saving the world?”

 

Theta Sigma jerked in his chair, flinching as if he’d been bitten.

 

“Yes, Jack. Thank you for that... ”

 

His fingers touched his belly again, but this time, the motion held no mirth.

 

“Welllll! It’s time I told you both about that signal, yes?”

 

His two companions nodded.

 

“Sorry. Once I focus on it, it can be a bit... distracting. You see, there are all sorts of telepathic subwaves involved here. You two are probably blind to all but the most rudimentary of twinges, but me, with my superior brain and albeit _low-level_ telepathic sensitivities... it’s _still_ like hearing an impossibly loud, deafening scream in my head. A bit rude, really. Aloysius here was kind enough to draw my attention from it for a bit with his natural charm, but it’s getting louder.”

 

He touched a thumb to his temples to illustrate. Already his brows were beginning to knit. He was feeling something... which meant there was something to be felt. Which meant there was something to be stopped.

 

And that something was bad news, in Jack’s book. But Pendergast had remained silent. Was still silent.

 

“What do you think, Agent?” Jack said, cocking his head toward the stiff albino, who was busying himself with the space beyond the Doctor’s left shoulder.

 

“I think we need more information. There’s something he’s not telling us. Isn’t there, Doctor?”

 

The agent’s eyes flipped like a shot toward the Time Lord, who matched his lightning gaze speed for speed.

 

“... very well. It’s been going on for a while. Trillions of years, to be exact. More than trillions... so far beyond trillions that the light _from_ and what.”

 

“And so?” the Agent guided softly, tilting his white-blond head as though he knew something about loud noises from personal experience. Maybe he did. He had the body of a thirty-something, after all, if you didn’t count the ghostly-faint scars tracing his handsome, hawkish face.

 

“This... this... _thing_ happened, before there was Time. Before there was anything. Before... so much transpired in the first transcendent picoseconds, and then later, when the Old Ones came from their home universe. They were the First Time Lords, before Gallifreyans latched onto the idea. When we were still savage. Before we even _were._ Some on Gallifrey said I was one of them, because at the tender age of nine or so I told one of my teachers of my first memory, that of being born, and before that, of being in the Looms, of Becoming Alive. Again. Of feeling the breath enter my new-formed lungs in the first moment of life. But all that is in the Second Past. You two must hear something of the First, of the Time Before Time. And you know what?” The Time Lord shook himself and rose, straightening to full height with a hand on his belly as though the little kitchen table were a podium of office rather than a hastily-tidied eating nook, only to lean wearily on the windowsill as if the weight of worlds were a tangible encumbrance upon him. “I’m beginning to think those other Gallifreyans were right.”


	2. Requiem for a Mantra

A soft whirring hung in the chamber. The reverberation reached every curve, every corner of the complex, like a monstrous wave curling across the beach to swallow the shadows of existence. Crashing against the walls of its cylindrical cage, the whirring began its mindless circling rise to freedom again, building and building on itself with each round of the tube as the curving walls of the complex served a threefold purpose as conduit, amplifier and containment. But soon, it would not be contained. Soon a satellite of the complex would be brought into the light, and then the TSPEC, the Temporal Studies Programming Core, would re-activate. After that there would be no reparation. The Program would run, and the TimeStation would begin to awaken from its sleep at the center of Mutter’s Stellian Spiral Galaxy, the Milky Way, now. The TSPEC would reinstate the Temporal Sequencers, making the Milky Way one huge satellite dish for a massive wave of Anti-Time. Rassilon had planned everything. Everything except the Other’s interference. Strange that he hadn’t seen that coming.  But then the fat old bastard had always been too big-headed for his own good. Then again, so had he. He had waited so very long to take his revenge on the Other... soon, so very soon now, he would have his chance. Preparation came first, however, always first, after his defeat at the hands of the Other’s shadow all those years ago. And he was anything if not prepared. In fact, his preparations were doubtless being discovered at this very moment, by the expeditious little Earthians’ latest clunker. Not long, now. Oh, yes. It wouldn’t be long at all until his little present reached the Earth, and by the reports he was getting, the very person he wanted to notice his pet project was well on the verge of being unable to get in his way. An auspicious day in the Milky Way, indeed. So much for the neighborhood.

 

He chuckled to himself as he made his way from the outer viewing area and into the corridors which led to the seven automated dummy consoles he’d had the forethought to set up. Really! Did the woman honestly think he’d be stupid enough to give her access to the CAT _C alculating Animal with a Tail_ cryonic storage? How else was he supposed to control the variables involved? She’d been standing just over th... where was she?

 

“Right here.”

 

Suddenly a syringe blossomed in his neck, held by a woman’s fingers, the nails painted in a crimson that could have been blood. The last thing he saw was the bluish ring that rested safely on her third finger.

 

“So sorry, Omega, but I want to survive. Can’t be having any of that Anti-Time nonsense out of you again. You’re just a shadow of yourself, anyway. Nothing worth wasting my time on.” The woman stroked the small animal in her arms, a sleek, black felinoid with bright red eyes. “This one is of better stock, anyway. The best. He’s descended from the Other. I should know, because I have something of his. Something I imagine he’ll want back very badly once he realizes it’s gone.” Gliding to the nearest console, she punched in some numbers, opening a com channel to her prisoner.

 

“Hello, girlie! How is the weather down there? Or have you decided to join me yet? Life with Daddy will be boring, but with me... well, let’s just say we won’t be bothered by such petty things as morals. I am a scientist! You could be my assistant! Together we could-

 

“Not in this lifetime, or any other. You really ought to let me out of here. Dad is not going to like this. You gonna tell him, or shall I? ‘Cause I know I’m gonna enjoy the look on his face. Not so sure about you, though!” The girl’s bouncy young laugh was enough to make the Rani gag. But she carried on. For Science. They were that similar, after all.

 

“Stop your nattering and I may just contact him now, so he can watch as I turn you into a toad. Or maybe I should cross you with a Chronovore instead? Oh yes, I think Daddy would like that a great deal! That is, if he wasn’t soon to be otherwise engaged with the little baby shower present Omega sent off for. In any case, your father is pregnant, and in no condition to come to the rescue. Plus, he thinks you died on Messaline. What do you think of that, eh? Personally I can’t _wait_ to get my hands on the three children he’s carrying... what fun I would have! There’s no better laboratory than flesh.”

 

Jenny pressed her fingers to her stomach in awe, then sank down cross-legged on the floor. There had to be a way out, at the very least a way to contact her father without _her_ knowing. But how? She glared up at the viewing module, where the Rani was toying with her hair as if the module were a mirror. Rather a vain woman for a Time Lord...


	3. That Which Lies in Empty Graves

The Doctor’s face had slipped into a manic grin, for he had spotted the remains of the birthday cake across the way, lying disabused and lonely on the buffet table. He edged around the wall, aiming for the shadows of the UNIT command center. Weaving past some chairs and a few on-looking partygoers, he was only inches from the table, now...just a little closer... a little closer... to him that cake was so much more than a cake... that cake was the kid in _Terms of Endearment._ Nice cake, nice kid. Child actor, probably...

 

“Oi!” he cried aloud, rubbing his two-month stomach as his thoughts suddenly leapt from cake and children to Lord of the Flies and cannibalism.

 

“Ah, Aloysius!” the Time Lord called out in an attempt to change the subject, seeing the agent conversing with Major Kusanagi across the room.

 

They were both holding plates full of cake. For a moment he stopped in wonder, feeling a tremendous awe at how the Major had managed to distract the albino long enough to allow a hungry, pregnant Gallifreyan male a second go at said cake. They certainly seemed occupied, what with the in-depth conversation they were having about technologies futures and the current underground political maneuverings of the Japanese Parliament. Thank the stars for good cake. He reached for the platter, stretching out his long, slim fingers toward the half-eaten tower of confectionary bliss. With silver sugar-flowers spilling over the edges and white frosting in streams about the rims, the triple chocolate cake was surely Jack’s way of tormenting him. He wasn’t to have any caffeine, which meant decaffeinated tea and no coffee -really, who cares for coffee when there’s tea- and worst of all, no chocolate. But it was right in front of him! He knew enough about his physiology to know that just a little nip wouldn’t hurt! Besides, chocolate was practically medicine on some planets. And Theta Sigma was a good boy, an exceptionally bright boy who knew when to take his medication. Just one more inch, and then he’d have his-

 

 

“Theta! Step away from that cake or I’ll have Agent Pendergast sedate you for the rest of the party! Now!”

 

 

-way. So much for joy in living. With a sigh, the Time Lord looked around at everyone who’d heard the Captain rebuke him, which was most of the group of partygoers, and then casually slipped away from the table, arms at his sides as he whistled his way off into a small hallway, pretending indifference. He passed by a window -they were holding the party on the upper floor, after all- and strode over to take a peek from the shining glass, as there was something interesting happening outside. In the sky, really... there were news vans and everything a mile or so away. He could see them, being a Time Lord. He turned, feeling a shadow in the hall, and soon his lover’s strong fingers laced on his shoulder and back, rubbing at twinges.

 

“Aren’t you supposed to be resting? I thought you said you were going to take a kip.”

 

Theta eased back into the man’s arms. “Well... I _was_ sleeping to begin with, Jack. But something came up,” he paused, rubbing his forehead with a thin, elegant thumb, “... that signal... it’s drawing nearer as we speak.”

 

Jack Harness’ fingers dug into the alien’s flesh, slowly, gently, with all the force of an angry mate. But he wasn’t angry at Theta, oh no. He wanted to do something for the Time Lord’s headaches, but he couldn’t. That was the way of things. Neither of them could do anything for the other.

 

“It was another migraine that woke you, wasn’t it?”

 

The alien nodded, then immediately regretted the movement as a jolt of pain came flashing through his brain, casting shades about his skull like a feral blaze loosed on dry brush.

 

“Oh, bollocks. That... wasn’t... very nice.”

 

He was clutching his head, turning paler with every breath.

 

Jack steadied the Time Lord between himself and the sill for a moment, looking forward, just forward. He didn’t dare look anywhere else.

 

Step after cautious, agonizing step, they both made it back to the party room with hollow movements that rang like bombs in the alien’s ears.

 

“I’ve... got a fever, Jack. There’s a... sub-wave... embedded in the signal. Think... think I’m allergic!”

 

He was trying for _humour,_ but all he could manage was breathlessness. If he used his respiratory bypass for more than a minute, it could damage his unborn babies’ brains; cause their organs to stall like old cars. That was a non-option. So he withstood it, eyes fixed ahead and staring like a model in a renaissance portrait.

 

They reached the double doors. Eyes were shifting towards them, most notably a pair of silver baby blues and crimson photocells. The agent and the Major were quick to rush to their side, quick to take him from Jack’s struggling grasp. Motoko Kusanagi, with a cyborg’s strength and skill and hard-won dexterity, lifted the alien with ease, almost as though he were a toy. Jack let go an audible breath as the albino checked Theta over for any other problems. But the party was dead. The Doctor was ill, and there would be no more hiding it.


	4. Sagt Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind

_Well,_ Jenny thought as she closed her eyes in the darkness of her cell, _it’s now or never._ The Rani wasn’t watching; she’d busied herself with a holo of giant, carnivorous frog-birds. Absently Jenny wondered what system, what planet they’d been from, and if the Rani had tampered with their lives as she sought even now to tamper with the Doctor’s.

 

A knock resounded.

 

“Hello?” She said it softly, submissively.

 

That was one rule she’d picked up from her Dad. _Never tip your hand to the enemy unless it isn’t your hand._

 

A voice like gravel spoke in her head then, the words’ simple rhythm striking her two hearts like a charm sung to children.

 

 _“Don’t speak out loud, girl. Do you want her hearing you? Hearing us? The self-obsessed idiot... ”_

 

There was a scratching sound, a soft pattering at the metal of her prison, as if someone were outside. But she knew better. The walls of the cell were smooth... the complex itself was situated within the center of Mutter’s Stellian Spiral. She’d gleaned that much from the Rani’s careless bragging. The center of the Milky Way... a great many of Dad’s companions had come from the third planet in the system.

 

 _Hello in there! I haven’t all day! I’ve got to get back before she notices, so if you want to see Dad again you’ll bloody well step back. If not, well...good luck getting out of there on your own. This entire chamber’s made of validium. It’s what your Father’s TARDIS is made of, well, partially anyway.”_

Jenny thought on this for a moment. Then she decided to try thinking _at_ it instead. __

_“Is this more like it?”_

 

Her mental grin beamed.

 

 _“Fair enough. Now, step away from there. I’m going to break you out.”  
_

Progress! Jenny was glad of the newcomer’s seeming willingness to help, but she couldn’t see him or her. What did him/her/it/they look like? Were they trapped here like she was? Oh, but that didn’t make much sense, being as that they were offering to get her out. So what was it, then, and why were they doing it? Ah, well... one way to find out. She backed off from the slim silverish portal and sent another anxious thought toward her newfound patron.

 

 _“All right, then! Any time you’re ready, eh?”_

Silence.

 

She stopped sending instantly, fearing her new best mate had been discovered.

More silence.

 

Jenny eased her gaze up to the view within the vid. The Rani was at some control console, having left the CAT to roam the top. Then she saw it. The CAT was staring at her, the ruby eyes burning like coals through her brain. Two sharp canines slipped down, bearing a smile full of other teeth in its slim mouth. The creature was definitely looking at her. She rose again, moving toward the door with one eye on the screen. As she watched in fascination, the CAT turned its head slowly, almost calculably, and the screen turned with it. With one blink of its eyes, two blinks, the screen staticed out. For a few seconds, the only thing picked up by the monitors was radio snow. And the com was attached to the monitors, a necessary oversight, the Rani had said once, in order for her experiments to run in tandem.

 

Well, Jenny thought, a manic smile creeping over her face as she pushed open the door to her cell. Oversight was one thing... hostile takeover was clearly another. She closed the door behind her just in time to see the vid screen jolt back to life in one quiet little blip. She was free, and all because of the CAT. He was definitely coming with her. As she softly chopped and kicked her way through a series of frogmen lounging in the outer corridor, she thought about her father, about his time on Messaline in the minutes before she’d stepped freshly born from the machine, and in those fleeting moments after. He’d shunned her out of grief, in the beginning. But that would change when she reached him, had begun to change already the day she’d died in his arms. The smile on his face was worth any trouble she had getting to him. And she was to have siblings! She promised herself then, as she rounded on another series of frogmen who were guarding the way to the upward lift. She was going to survive. She was going to reach him. As her agile mind sped through the options, the Rani’s scream arched through the restored com links. Her escape had been discovered.

 

“You! Traitorous, defective... garbage! I created you! I... ”

 

Oh well... now the fun would start!

 

Jenny ran in front of the frogmen, leaping into action as one started to raise a com and speak. The others were hop-walking towards her...what was it with the Rani and frogmen? It was getting old. As she dropped the next set of guards, she found she had to smile at that. She was beginning to sound like her father. The lift was open. It was time to go confront the Rani, and get back her ship.

 

Suddenly, a sick, wet crunch erupted over the com, and a yelp of pain crackled in her head, making her dizzy. Drawing her slim fingers into fists, she entered the lift. The decision was made. Never leave a man behind. That was one rule all her own.


	5. Sic labitur somnium Dei

_Everything is fog, now, so much fog. But once..._

 

 _The girl races around the wall. She is searching for something, perhaps... someone. There is a shadow on the ground. Is it the thing she seeks? Her hair is the color of pale wheat, with just a touch of honeyed sunlight. It’s pulled back in a ponytail, means she’s the athletic type. She bends down, scoops up the mangled thing. The black, glossy creature stares through her, red eyes misted with the pain of the dying. They are intelligent eyes, those crimson drops, full of scheme and wit and vibrant will. And they are fading. The girl nods, as if something has been spoken. Then she turns, attacks the switchboards around her in a frenzy of calculated sabotage. Where is her ship? Which button? What does this do? Opens... something. Something is unshielded, now. Something large. It Begins, as the creature instructed. But not what she was looking for... Where is her-ah. Soon. Soon. Along the outer corridor, another shadow creeps, a shade of fuller form and muddy substance. There is a gleam of dull blue-green. A stolen ring glints bleakly on a traitor’s finger. The woman has come back. She was waiting for the girl. Preparing, like the other. The glossy creature shivers, shuddering more than once in the girl’s careful grasp. Death is coming. But not to the girl. The girl is wily. Just. Full of freedom. She secrets herself in a cabinet beneath a console, the one with the Button she knows she must not yet press. The woman is angry, beyond reason. But that is one of her many weaknesses, and as she strikes out at the little world she’s made for herself in this place, wrecking everything she’s built in a childish fit of despair, the girl removes herself from hiding just enough to watch, to wait. Perhaps... the woman’s ship... if she could only see which-_

“Doctor... ”

 

“... Doctor?”

 

“Doctor Bloom! Are you all right?”

 

“Someone take over for him! He’s turning pale!”

 

“Oh lord, look at him... white as a sheet.”

 

“What’s wrong, Doctor? Say something, please!”

 

“Grace... ” Theta spoke the name, holding it behind his teeth like a half-remembered prayer.

 

A woman’s face swept into view. Grace. His last companion before the War. His eyes blinked of their own accord, and suddenly he found himself again. He was standing in an Operating Room on the third floor of the Feversham Clinic, his slender shape enclosed by‘50s California Motel Mint Green scrubs. There were rubber gloves on his hands, a slim device held loosely in one of them. His sonic probe, sonic screwdriver. Affectionate nickname. Course he’d had to rebuild it several times over the course of his nine-hundred-odd year lifespan. But that didn’t... matter now. The slim silver probe fell from his fingers, forgotten in the face of what he had just witnessed. A waking dream...a kind of hallucination... but why so vivid? Why so... familiar? He wasn’t used to his brain obscuring its own analytical processes. Calmly, slowly, he stepped back from the OR table, then turned to Nancy, his favourite nurse. Lovely girl, she was, a bright young thing with a bounce of black, shimmering hair.

 

“Nancy. What I am going to tell you is of the utmost importance. I want you to contact a Doctor Grace Holloway out of San Francisco. She’s a... friend of mine, a... former companion. Grace just happens to be an excellent cardiologist, which is what this poor sod on the table needs. She even operated on _me_ , once! Oh yes! Doctor Grace killed me dead... by accident, of course. Tell her... I... well just give her this message.” He stopped talking for a moment, just a moment... resting for a spell before he raised a hand to his nose to catch the dark droplets that were forming near his left nostril.

 

“Doctor... ”

 

Nancy was growing concerned now. He could tell by the sheen of perspiration gleaming on her lily skin, if not by the subtle creasing of thin black brows. Life told him everything about her, everything about everything about everything. He could see it all. How had he forgotten? How could he have? Why? Why would he have forgotten? As the sparkling sterility of the Operating Room became a dim, dark tunnel filled with gray-white fog, he looked down at his hand. The hand he’d raised was blurry and red. There was a heated wetness flowing from his nose now, and his eyes were struggling to focus, to adjust in the fog. Why was it so hard to see? His cardiopulmonary muscles were not responding properly... nothing was. Something wasn’t moving that should be moving. His arm felt numb, his chest tight and breathless as if caged. Scrapes and bruises were cropping up over his whitening skin, as he could feel every flinch of injured meat beneath the flesh. His forehead was afire, like a reddening sunburn turned outside-in, and still the fever spread through him. Was he going to die? Again?

 

“So soon... not... here long enough to... ”

 

As he murmured weak questions to the sterilized air, the other doctors were staring at something else. The drops in his hand had become a pool. A growing puddle of deep red had filled his cupped hand and was pouring like communion wine from between his long fingers, staining them a lovely shade of mulberry. Realization wormed through his belly like a gorging parasite. He felt himself lean; the room... seeming to tilt on an axis he could not feel. The OR table was coming closer... how strange. The floor... he was going to...

 

 

Then it happened. With one last look at Nancy, the Time Lord crumpled, one hand flung against his stomach to protect himself even as the weaker of his two hearts burst in his chest.


	6. ... and Bobby McGee

“I don’t know if I like that alien... working on patients in the OR.”

 

“Don’t be that way, Mike. He collapsed from partial myocardial infarction yesterday morning.”

 

“Still, it’s too weird... now there’s some girl... claims she’s the Doctor’s Daughter... ”

 

“Well, if she is... ”

 

“As I was saying, if she is, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”

 

“Yeah. I heard she’s just as crazy as he is.”

 

“Hey. You there.”

 

Jack Harkness was livid as he grabbed one of the two male nurses who had spoken and spun him roughly.

 

“Oh ho ho! _That alien_ -who happens to be four months pregnant with triplets- is in there sleeping off a fucking heart attack! Plus he deserves a damn break, especially considering how many times he’s saved this good for nothing rock! Shut up now or else, because I’m just _itching_ to try out these new phase displacers I borrowed from UNIT... ”

 

“Don’t mind him. He’s from Torchwood: Cardiff. With their member survival rate,  I wouldn’t be surprised if they found him dead on the sidewalk tomorrow. He’s bluffing. UNIT won’t get the new shipment of phase displacers from Phelacti 7 till tomorrow night.”

 

“Ha! Street Pizza! Killer! But, hey. You really shouldn’t talk like that, especially around those Torchwood guys. The Doctor... Torchwood... they’ve saved Earth so many times, we probably can’t count them all. Come on. We can finish our coffees in the lounge on the second floor.”

 

“Whatever you want, Rudy. I just don’t know about all these aliens... used to be so quiet, before that Christmas.”

 

The two nurses walked off toward the elevator to finish their lattes. Once they’d gone, Jack turned and stared at the tall man at the end of the hall. The man turned too, meeting Jack’s gaze with a mixture of amusement and sagacious detachment.

 

“Jack.”

 

A weak whisper broke their stalemate and they both headed for the door to the Doctor’s room.

 

“Yeah, I’m here.”

 

Jack walked calmly to the bed and took the alien’s one free hand in his. “It’s about time you woke up. The girls were worried.”

 

A thin smile, then a laugh. The eyes were dark with weakness, despite being half-closed against the assault of dimmed lights. It was painful to see him like that.

 

“I...  thought they might be. What, if... if anything, did they... say when you told them?”

 

Those beautiful blue eyes fluttered for a moment, and his head lolled, but then, “... what did Grace say when she saw me? I... Uhn. I must have looked a right dog’s breakfast, eh? Lord knows I feel like it. Come here, you! Come... here... ”

 

As Agent Pendergast strayed into the room, Jack sat down beside the bed and just... lay his head on the cream blanket the Time Lord was wrapped in. Theta grinned and managed to raise the appropriate hand just so, enough to tangle his fingers limply in the Captain’s hair.

 

The Agent watched all this, saying nothing as Jack fell asleep beneath the Doctor’s palm. As the alien met his own blue gaze and held it effortlessly, Aloysius Pendergast thought of many things; Diogenes, his genius, madling brother. His lovely daughter-niece, Constance Greene, the pedantic, victim foundling of another time and place. His lover Lady Viola Mascalene, who had been the single sheaf of golden wheat in an otherwise barren field. He himself was around fifty-eight, now... though he looked no more than 45, albeit a very young 45, due to his great-uncle’s extra-curricular biochemical activities in the early nineteenth century. With a soft laugh, he came to stand a little ways behind Jack Harkness, who hadn’t slept since the early hours of the previous day, when the Doctor had collapsed.

 

“Aloysius X. Leng Pendergast.”

 

At the sound of what was almost his full name, the Agent blinked once, then surrendered himself to waiting within the silence to which he had grown so accustomed.

 

“Hah. You... are a bright one, for a stupid ape... ” came the soft admonishment from the bed, “... but then, from you I’d expect nothing else.”

 

The albino smiled that smile at him, a smile Theta had seen on his face many times; confident, assured; guarded by two towering walls of luminous silver-blue ice.

 

“And you, my dear Doctor Bloom, are a most exceptional man, as well. I daresay unique.”

 

After letting the pointless compliment settle on the alien’s psyche, Aloysius swept up a chair and sat beside the bed, beside the Captain, who still slept.

 

“I imagine he’d wake up instantly if you moved that hand. Am I right?”

 

Theta smiled weakly, patting the mattress beneath him with his other hand.

 

“Now you get it, brilliant human that you are! Come and have a sit on this side of the bed, here, my old friend, you! We have some urgent business to discuss.”

 

“Ah, so.”

 

The albino moved to the side of the bed, taking the chair with him, and sat there beside the raised mattress. Then he leaned forward to guard their privacy, folding his arms near The Doctor’s waist.

 

“What do you need that the hospital cannot get for you? That _he_ cannot get for you?”

 

Suddenly the alien raised up, heaving with effort, and grabbed him by the sides of the head. Aloysius found he could not move, though The Doctor’s grasp was gentle and easy.

 

“Oh, not for me, for you, old chap! For you. There is so little time left, before I... before _we_... I’m so very sorry for doing this, but... it falls to you to save us all, and the Agohzyen is the only way to regain that which you lost... do not be afraid. I will keep the darkness from you. Save my children, Aloysius! Save them all!”

 

The agent didn’t have time to breathe before the tapestry appeared in his head, a glowing curtain of lines that flowed in a very particular pattern. He could not help but look at the lines as they flowed, but he felt none of the heart-swallowing dis-ease as before on the cruise ship; instead, he felt calm, safe. The Doctor had not lied to him, then. He could feel the alien’s soft, soothing voice speaking through him, echoing in his mind as he was pulled away from the flames of indifference toward a quiet, empty hallway. At the end was a door painted in green, the knob silvery and cold to the touch. He opened the door...and there was the silken rope the Rinpoche had given him, untied and waiting. Aloysius took the rope. Then all was golden.

 

“Eureka... ” he murmured as he shut the door to The Doctor’s room and walked swiftly down the hall. As he reached the elevator, a sound echoed through the corridor, and a Code Blue screamed itself out over the hospital com...

 

“Crash-cart in room 11! I repeat! Code Blue! Crash-cart in room 11, NOW!”


	7. Those Mechanical Lights

“I told you, my name is Jenny. I was born from an extrapolator on the planet Messaline. Go ahead. Test me!”

 

But no matter how many times she said it, the men in black and white seemed not to hear. They were watching her now, gauging her, studying. It really was too obvious. They thought she was a crazy. Well, she didn’t have time for them. She had to find her father The Doctor, tell him about the TimeStation, about the Rani and her former partner. About the CAT. But here she was. Back in a cell again. Brilliant.

 

Suddenly a honeyed voice was in her head, soft and thick and smooth as silver. __

_“Hello, Jenny. Don’t ask. Just wait there. I’ll have you out of this detestable place in a very few moments.”_

 

 _“Who are you?”_

 

Mentally, she asked it of him, for oh yes, it was certainly a _him_. But she had watched the CAT die in her arms on the TimeStation as the Rani trashed the controls, so who could it be? It wasn’t her father’s mental presence, and yet she knew him. Or rather, a part of him.

 

“Hey, young lady. Are you listening to us?”

 

“Don’t bother, Tobin. She’s off in la-la land. Just look at that stupid grin she’s got on her face.”

 

“Well, I certainly think that was uncalled for, Remmy. Now miss, uh, Jenny. Do you want a nice glass of water? I could get you one, if you like.”

 

Jenny shook her head, staring at him with that -stupid grin- her father so favored. “No thanks. I really ought to be going. I’ve got a universe to save!”

 

“That does it. Call upstate. We gotta get her to the psych ward.”

 

“Heh.”

 

The stockier of the two men, William Tobin, held up two shiny metal click-rings attached by a chain.

 

“Did I say water? I meant these, uh, pretty bracelets! Now, honey, you just put these on and we’ll, uh-”

 

“Those handcuffs won’t be necessary, gentlemen.”

 

It was that honeyed voice again. A knock came at the door, and when it had opened fully, a man stood in the gap. A pallid man, with bright silver eyes that sparkled like her father’s. The two men stared at the third, for he was a tall man, with a face full of faint scars that caught the dim light just so, making him look... rather menacing. But she could smell her father on him.

 

“Oh, hello! Are you here to take me to my father?”

 

She said it with gusto, ignoring the two men as she stood up and moved toward the tall man at the door. Suddenly the man’s pale face swung left to right, as though he were listening to something far off, something that would not be staying that way for very long. She listened, too.

 

“Footsteps.”

 

Their gazes connected, and they understood each other. But more importantly, she understood what he wanted her to do. Looking back at the two men, Jenny slipped past the man who smelled of her father and hit the opposite wall, flattening herself against the hard, cold blocks.

 

“What are you going to do about these people?”

 

“Oh, don’t worry about them. They won’t remember much of anything after Captain Jack gets through with them.”

 

A frown grew on Jenny’s face. She hadn’t believed her father would befriend anyone who could kill so easi-”

 

But the man’s voice interrupted her.

 

“It’s quite all right, Jenny. Jack would never betray your father in such a fashion. Just follow me, and we’ll soon get to where we need to go.”

 

Well that was fast. He must have seen her scrunch her face muscles. Absently she wondered what her father would have done as the man smiled, grabbed her hand and sprinted toward yet another man, who -in a long bluish coat and faded boots- was leaning on the emergency exit staircase wearing a crooked grin and waving after them with a strange gun. He had a strap on his wrist of faded leather, which he would check every few minutes.

 

“Captain Jack, Jenny. Jenny, Captain Jack.”

 

The pale man, -Jack called him an albino- introduced them to each other as the three of them were running down the stairs.

 

“May I suggest a swift departure, Captain?”

 

To her utter awe, his silvery-blue eyes glinted in amusement when he spoke, just like her father’s.

 

“Sounds like a plan! Let’s go!”

 

Jenny said it with a shrug, just like The Doctor would have. Then she turned to Jack as they hit flat ground again on the back lot of the station.

 

“What did you do to them, Jack? Did you give them something to knock them out? Hope it doesn’t hurt them. Dad wouldn’t like that much.”

 

The man grinned as he ran beside her, one hand on her shoulder for a short moment.

 

“You’re right. When he wakes up, I’m never gonna hear the end of it for using that much Retcon. Aloysius, shall we hightail it?”

 

They’d reached the opposite lot, where a mess of rusted fence stood guard across an overgrown field.  There was a blue box in the clearing, and the grass wasn’t blowing around it.

 

Jenny knew it at once.

 

“Dad’s ship! But where is he?”

 

She turned to Jack.

 

“Is he all right? I know he’s pregnant, but... why did he need to sleep? Was he hurt?”

 

Jack just looked at her.

 

“Ah, well... one of his hearts sort of... there was this signal from space that was hurting him badly. We couldn’t wake him up, so we brought him back to Her... ”

 

Aloysius touched his shoulder lightly.

 

“Jack. Perhaps she should see him for herself.”

 

The other man seemed to hesitate as he met Jenny’s eyes, then he looked away toward her father’s ship, giving them the come on to hurry to the safety of that ship. The safety of the TARDIS.

 

Then they had to duck, for the sound of clicking guns could be heard coming at them.

 

“Hm. Reinforcements. How unfortunate. Perhaps you ought to have upped their dosage?”

 

Agent Pendergast ducked as a bullet winged past his face, drawing a line of blood. He never blinked.

 

Jack just glared as he crawled, taking a moment to look back and fire his strange, sleek firearm into the air. Then Pendergast flung a hand toward the crowd of police, and a flood of air flew backwards at their pursuers, shoving the gaggle of officers back.

 

“What was that?”

 

Jack managed flatly as they reached the safe confines of the TARDIS’ shielding.

 

But Pendergast only smiled as he took Jenny’s shoulders briefly, then pointed her in the direction of the center console.

 

“A magician must keep _some_ secrets, Captain Harkness,” he breathed, distracted for a moment as he wiped sweat from his thin white eyebrows with the flick of a slender hand, “... now, Jenny, I don’t want you to be alarmed, but... he may look quite different than before, do you understand?”

 

All she could see were the wings. Three red wings were poking from her father’s back. He was floating above the console, curled in a loose ball within a twisted mesh of coral and crystal and validium.

 

“It looks... like the ship grew around him, doesn’t it?”

 

“That it does, Jenny. That it does,” Pendergast said, eyeing Jack as two women, one chocolate-skinned, one pale, came around the center to greet them.

 

The tags on one woman’s coat said: _Grace Holloway._ The other said: _Martha Jones._


	8. The Divine Carousel

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

 

At last, the long sleep had done with. The TimeStation was whirring to monstrous life at the center of Mutter’s Stellian Spiral Galaxy.

 

Soon. Soon. Soon.

 

Soon the Milky Way would be transformed into a gigantic satellite dish, irradiating the Universe in a wave of Anti-Time that would destroy what remained of the temporal balance the Time Lords had worked so hard to establish through quadrillions of years of discovery and planning.

 

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

 

Soon, so very soon now, existence would be nothing left but pre-memory, until that too faded into the Before. What then would remain? Nothing would. And once the wave of Anti-Time struck the boundaries of Creation and reflected back upon itself, what then?

 

That could not be. It must not be.

 

If that were to happen... possibly even the Universes before could be affected. Perhaps they could even be destroyed. And what of Angels and Demons then? What of anything? What If?

 

What If? What If? What If? What If? What If?

 

...

 

...

 

...

 

What If? What If? What If? What If? What If? What If? What If? What If? What If?

 

What If What?

 

The question ruminated in the darkness, like a new-lit flame in the night. As it spun, reflecting itself, the darkness drank in the light of the question and became The Darkness. And The Darkness looked upon itself, striving to move. Striving to achieve that which it could not remember. Slowly, so very slowly, like an ache in the chest, the question began to build on itself within The Darkness’ mind, growing, constructing, forming shapes that would reflect even more light upon itself. It -The Darkness- wanted to Know. It hungered to feed on knowledge, as others hungered for power. Suddenly, The Darkness realized that there were others. It had remembered something? When? Instantaneously, realization flooded it. The moment was not important, not so important perhaps as the fact that it existed at all.

 

So, it thought to itself. There were Others... were they like itself? The soft sound of whirring interrupted its murmuring processes, and it Moved, caught in the throes of something that was not so much fear as simple surprise. There was a girl staring at it. A blonde creature. Nameless colors spoke to the Darkness about the girl, their words to it carried on a derelict, shining wind that howled. It remembered the name of that wind, as it Turned to stare at the girl who stared up at it in equal unsurprise. The name of the wind was _Rose._

 

 _Rose._

 

 _His..._

 

 _... Rose._

 

Two more questions Began in The Darkness. The first had caught so much light that it had attracted them. One, Two, Three. And now they pulled at each other, spiraling together like tiny globules of plasma.

 

The Second Question was: _His Rose?_

 

The Third: _Where Was a Banana When You Needed One?_

 

The Darkness remembered Rose. The golden child. Love’s Power fluttered through It in golden veins like streaks of ore trapped in the rock wall of a cave. The Darkness had died in a cavern, once. Death? Interesting. But what was a _banana?_ And would _His Rose_ know? Contemplation ensued then, as more questions appeared and caught on themselves, floating, building, focusing more light into The Darkness. It could see again, at least, when the mass of light had grown beyond the confines of the Planck Scale.

 

Planck Scale, Planck Scale... Planck Scale! Wait, what _was_ that? Planck Scale... The Darkness had no idea. It blinked, feeling the swirl of fluid around its body. Its body. When had It had a body? It couldn’t recall. But it had one now. What could be done with such a thing? It wondered, stretching reflexively within the confines of its new form. There was a void within It, however. A Void that once had been filled with Life. Life. A title came, bidden and wispy. Life’s Champion. Yes. He had carried life with himself. Three Lives. But where had they gone, these three? Suddenly he felt the weight of feathers on his back. _His_ _Back._ Suddenly he remembered the mole that had been there. Intriguing, even...fascinating. What else was his? This thought, in turn -The Darkness found to his great delight- spawned yet another Question. This Question was larger than the rest, full with light like the seedful ovary of a ripe fruit. Images swirled across its form, as though it were a ball of water. He reached out to touch it, and felt the cool liquid of calm rush through his newfound flesh. But he could not see clearly. Had he not opened his eyes? He seemed to recall engaging his will toward the action, though now it seemed his vision was refusing to obey, or at the very least was sluggish. Once more he tried to move forward, and gasped as he felt new breath enter his well-formed lungs, burning him in its freshness, its clarity of presence. Then he was no longer The Darkness. He was blind. And wet. And cold. His new body was... lying on the metal of a... grating? Yes. The grating of The Ship.

 


	9. The Red Shoes

“So, Doctor Holloway I presume?”

 

The albino was cordial. She’d give him that, at least. It was one up from the Captain’s tone, in any case. Martha Jones was a colleague; a sister in arms against whatever it was that was threatening The Doctor’s life. He looked so young, so vulnerable, floating at the center of his Ship like a developing foetus. What had happened to the triplets he’d been carrying before his transformation? The wings on his back... only three. Perhaps their flesh had been absorbed, reused in the change. Except that they seemed to exist separately from him, as though they were still children, only different. Like him. She allowed herself a quick little smile at the notion. According to the others, he was even younger now then when he’d gotten pregnant... he’d had long, straight red hair, blue eyes. Now his hair was short, deep brown and shaggy, perched across one side of his forehead like a cascade of extravagant dirt, forever falling in and out of place. Rather like him, really. So very like him.

 

“Doctor Holloway?”

 

The agent was still looking at her, one slim white hand eloquently involved with twirling a pen, which would have been completely normal, except that the pen was twirling in mid-air. He wasn’t touching it.

 

“Oh! I’m sorry, Agent Pendergast. I was thinking about something else.”

 

It was silly of her to state the obvious like that, but... her mind _was_ on other things. Like the beautiful alien hovering in stasis above the console of his own Ship. Like that alien’s daughter, who had grown in mere moments from a machine, died in his arms, then came back to find him, to tell him and ended up in a mess. She was like him, right down to the goofy little grin and that gleam in the eye she got whenever adventure was mentioned.

 

The agent was unperturbed, as usual. An interesting man. “There’s...no hurry, Doctor. I was just wondering...how did the two of you meet? Was it in the normal way, or did our friend the Time Lord just happen to fall into your lap, so to speak?”

 

That one got Grace Holloway right in the lower intestine, which was probably how he’d planned it. The man was a genius, after all. “All right, if you want to know so badly, Agent, I’ll tell you.” She steeled herself, forcing herself to remember what she’d done to The Doctor when they’d first met.  

 

“A street gang filled him full of bullets. He passed out and was brought into my ER. I operated on him, and the anesthetic nearly stopped him regenerating. I killed him.”

 

The pale man stopped playing with the pen and smiled at her, blue eyes glittering. “Now, now, Miss Grace. It could have happened that way to any one of us.”

 

“Do any of you have my expertise? My doctorate? My medical degree?”

 

“... of a kind. I hold several doctorates in chemistry, philosophy, English Literature... ” Pendergast’s face never changed. He only seemed more determined to speak with her. He had more nerve than anyone she’d ever met! Everyone _except_ The Doctor.

 

“Don’t you forget about _me_ , Grace Holloway. _I_ saved the world with him, too.” That was Martha, chiming in from somewhere; probably the TARDIS baths. She deserved one. She’d taken the first shift after they’d brought The Doctor back from Feversham, to make sure nothing happened. But what worried them all more than anything was that he was sleeping at all. None of them had ever seen him sleep.

 

Stifling a yawn, Jack Harkness emerged from one of the off-leading corridors with a toothbrush and a can of beer, sporting boxers, blue flip-flops and a white tank.

 

“Hey, Martha! You’ll never believe what I found in the thirteenth bathroom! There’s graffiti in there dating back to-”

 

His eyes caught at The Doctor’s still form, comatose and floating in the strange stasis-inducing fluid above the heart of the console, and all pretense of content slid from his face.

 

“God. No change?”

 

Jack looked at Grace, false hope heavy as a noose around his neck.

 

Grace shook her head. “He’s still completely unresponsive, at least as far as we can tell. But, he is what he is. Perhaps he’s just... healing himself?”

 

“Hm. Tell me, Grace Holloway,” said the agent, eyeing the center console where the Doctor floated in limbo as though it was some kind of science experiment, “... do you think it would be a wise idea for me to try something? In my youth, I studied in Bhutan with the Buddhists there, and learned some very interesting techniques for stilling and focusing the mind. A few days ago, The Doctor rid me of my demons. I think I can do the same.”

 

“Be careful, Aloysius.”

 

Jack’s voice was low, soft. A knife in the dark. But Aloysius Pendergast just cocked his chin toward the man and looked at him, neither smiling or frowning.

 

“There will be blood, and shadows of shadows to drown your soul.”

 

The agent stared right through him, a skill honed through years of hunting those who would inflict pain on others. Years of seeing the carnage left in their wakes.

 

“Huh. Of course, Captain. You see, I tend to look at these situations in a very special light.”

 

He reached up, extending his arm to the column of watery fluid enveloping the alien.

 

“Indeed, I even look for them. Besides, why bring a torch when you can bring a mirror?”

 

Then he touched the cold, ever-flowing wetness, and the console room dissolved gradually into little points as he withdrew into himself. As for his destination, it was no mystery, for Aloysius Pendergast knew exactly which door in his Memory Palace would lead him to the prize.


	10. It Was Mercy

Fingers. Oh yes, that’s what those long things were on the ends of his hands... and they moved when he wanted! Brilliant! Sensing a nearby presence, he locked his fingers on the grate beneath his prostrate body and tried to push up. But strong, slender blue hands grabbed him about the chest and tugged, helping him into a sitting position. Then, when he’d caught his breath, the being lifted him up into its arms and carried him down a hallway, into a round, dark room full of spice and the fragrance of foreign summers. As he lay in a rough fetal position, curled in a smooth nest of blue arms and chest and ample bosom, he looked down at her feet and realized suddenly why she seemed to sink a bit when she walked. The floor was a lovely fiction of silk pillows...

 

And oh, the lighting, it was perfect! Rather pleasantly dim, he noticed happily, as he rather thought that too much light would hurt his eyes for a while, yet.

 

“It’s... you, isn’t it, Iraj?” he mumbled, feeling weary as the blue woman seated herself on a deep garnet couch with round pillows, then eased his head into her lap. Her hand moved close to his face and she brushed his brown hair, unruly as it was, away from his forehead with soft little movements.

 

  “You haven’t lost your knack for subterfuge, I see. You naughty old thing! What have you gone and done this time, eh?” He reached out to her, but she only sat there, withdrawing her hand as he found her face and stared into her eyes as though she were a scrying bowl.

 

“Oh, my beautiful, my delicate, my faithful Iraj, I’m sorry! Lord. I’m still not right from the... he held his head, feeling dizzy even as he closed his eyes and leaned back against her thigh. The blue fingers merely took up their place in his hair and resumed the careful strokes that had soothed away the endless nightmare of pain and death and bloody battles. She had brought him somewhere... where were they? He was too tired to think; a state which was relatively new for him.

 

“My beautiful Ship. You have given me a place to rest, to recover. But I cannot sleep any longer. I must get up.”

 

He blinked and tried to rise, but she pressed her fingers against his naked chest, pushing him down again. I cannot stay, Iraj. There are promises to keep, lives to whom I made those promises. But how shall I find them? I do not know their names.”

 

But the wounded look in those black eyes all but told him he did.

 

Tears gleaming on her cheeks, Iraj-who-was- _his-_ TARDIS looked down at him then, snaked her arm toward a Bombay chest along one wall. It vanished, leaving only an empty space in a puff of yellow, gold-flecked fog. And beyond the fog, there were... flowers. Green things, growing everywhere. A hole in the dream. A hole through which something of memory could enter. And enter something did.

 

Grass and flowers flowed in from the little alcove, popping up across the floor in little clumps like weeds among the pavers. He yawned. He wanted desperately to stay awake to see what else came out. But he was fading. Soon he would be asleep again.

 

He blinked, and the shape of a child grew up among the gently waving blades of red grass. Two children. Three. One child was watching the second torture the other with foul words and kicks and little rocks tossed in animal hatred. But then, as the one being kicked began to cry, the one who watched picked up a stone and... then there were two again. Eyes red with tears were the least of their worries, now. No one must know. No one could discover the first child’s transgression. He had destroyed a bully, destroyed their innocence for the sake of the other child. The boy who would grow up to be the Master. Who would lose his mind to Death’s relentless Drum. The endless call to War.

 

Theta Sigma fell to the floor, the heat of terror filling his cheeks as he writhed in self-loathing. His actions, his pact with Death had given Her Koschei of the House of Oakdown, allowed her to mold his boyhood friend into the madman called The Master. It could have been him. Should have been him. Shouldn’t it have been? Memory was a fearful thing. Why else had he forgotten? How could he have allowed himself to forget? How could he have willed such a soul-shattering fragment of himself into the safe places, forever to be hidden? Death’s price for forgiveness had been Koschei’s very soul! In return for sanity, for absolution, he had allowed the goddess to slowly consume the older boy’s spirit, everything beautiful about him. How? How and why and whatever for? He could still feel Iraj’s fingers where they had grasped his hand, petting, caressing, holding to lost hope like a seafarer’s widow. The weight of forgotten destiny rang like an ancient bell in his ears. The bell... why did it sound familiar? Where had he gotten it? The Cloister! Was something happening?

 

At the sound of that bell, Theta Sigma came awake. More people were pouring through the gap, surrounding him, worshipping him, kissing his feet. Throwing yellow, six-petalled Memento Mori blossoms in his path. But he wasn’t on his feet. Where were they carrying him?

 

“Iraj?” he croaked, but she was no longer beside him.

 

Perhaps she was waiting at their destination? Well, best to wait and see, he supposed. The many hands bore him down the hallway Iraj had carried him through, then back through the door. And the people were still coming. They came and came and came, singing and dancing and smiling, all of them whole and happy, children, animals, adults. And throughout, the bell rang, sounding and lifting and lulling in time to his heartbeats. He was laid out in reverence upon a stone altar, in a room carved with winged women.

 

“The Citadel of the Pythia? But... ”

 

When the streamers of white silks were wrapped around him, at last he recalled what he had been thinking about before his heart had burst.

 

“Oh, brilliant!” he said to the sea of Gallifreyan faces, smiling at each one as they came nearer, laying hands upon his naked flesh.

 

“Today is the Otherstide!”


	11. Quoth the Raven

Bubbles of shallow breath slid from The Doctor’s mouth as Jenny watched and waited. Of course, at seemingly random moments a tremor would take him, running through every limb and ending in his thin, bony shoulders, while an occasional blink shook his eyelids from their pallid moorings every few hours. But still, none of these things were proper indicators of the return to wakefulness they were seeking from him. Martha had said his condition would have seemed more hopeful if he hadn’t been breathing, something about a respiratory bypass he could engage at will. She touched the thickened, pectin-like wall of the console cocoon, felt it give a little under her fingers. Agent Pendergast was still sitting before the pulsing column, had been for half a day. What was he doing in there, in that place he’d gone to? Captain Jack was still outside. He’d gone out earlier that day to check on the strange scratching noises coming from outside the TARDIS. What had happened to him? It must have been instant, as she hadn’t even heard a scream. Being a soldier, she knew that it would not be wise to venture out after him, or... after his body, if he were dead or dying. That would have to wait until the lives of her companions were secure, until the threat outside was neutralized or eradicated. It was too much to hope for that whatever was making the noise would leave on its own, and the probability of a hostile force being behind the strangeness grew greater with every second Captain Jack Harkness stayed outside.

 

Jenny sighed. If only Agent Pendergast would wake up. Then they could at least bounce off each other, compare stratagems, outline plans of action. But he was not awake. He was deeply, necessarily involved inside his own mind. She didn’t like feeling useless. And, what was worse, the only person capable of piloting the Ship was floating in some sort of GOS-F _(gelatinous organic stasis fluid)_ compound above the central control console in front of her. It was silently, inescapably maddening.

 

“Jenny? Have you eaten yet?”

 

Martha came over to her from a suddenly-near corridor. The kitchens hadn’t been that way before... the Ship was sentient; perhaps it had moved them.

 

“The TARDIS doesn’t always take to every companion that stumbles onboard. But I think even she realizes the mess we’re in. I mean, look at her!”

 

Martha held up a nutritive pill pack and waved it limply at the center console where The Doctor floated.

 

“She’s even contained him within a kind of... placental gelatin. She’s keeping him safe from whatever’s outside. But not from us. That’s something, at least.”

 

Jenny couldn’t move. All she could do was stand there and watch her father’s bare chest rise and fall, feeling the slow, steady thrump-thrump! thrump-thrump! of his beating hearts as he slept like a moth in a chrysalis. Her eyes kept creeping down over his stomach, as though she expected him to be carrying more girth than he was. His slim mid-section certainly wasn’t showing now, if it ever had. Strange; Captain Jack had said The Doctor had conceived the triplets four months ago. Well, there _were_ those three odd wings on his back. Perhaps he’d just... absorbed the foetuses and then transformed them, for some reason. But he would never just cannibalize his own unborn children, would he? No. After all, what was it he’d said on Messaline as she lay dying in his arms? ‘ _I never would.’_ Jenny felt her brow furrow slightly in vague irritation. Something indefinably massive was taking place all around them, something she didn’t have enough experience to properly evaluate. She was born of her father, born of a Time Lord, but she lacked the knowledge, the skill, to be of any use as one. Then what was left to her? The food pills in Martha’s packet were sounding good... she asked for one.

 

“Martha. May I have a pack of those? I need to concentrate, but I’m suddenly hungry. Can’t think on an empty stomach... well, not as well, anyway.”

 

She flashed the woman a grin, which Martha returned as she tossed a pill pack Jenny’s way.

 

“You’re just like him, you know,” Martha said, coming around the occupied console to stand beside her, “... can you sit here with me? I would like to tell you about him. Might as well, since we’re stuck here, doing nothing! What do you say?”

 

“Yeah! I want to know. Everything!”

 

Martha laughed, then cast a wary look toward the TARDIS’ double doors.

 

“Well, I don’t know all that much, but what I do know, I’ll share.”

 

Jenny turned to smile at her, because suddenly it was as if a light had flashed on in her mind.

 

“Concentrate! That’s it! That stuff he’s floating in is a form of concentrated GOS-F! Gelatinous Organic Stasis Fluid! It’s what we used on Messaline to keep organic foodstuffs fresh! It shields what’s inside from all sorts of signals, but not waves generated in dream state! Agent Pendergast must have reasoned it out. Now, if we could just weaken a single point in the fluid, we could-

 

Martha shook her head. “That’s good, yeah, but we have to consider the medical ramifications of it. What if we hurt them both? If there was a surge in the system, we could kill Special Agent Pendergast, and seriously harm The Doctor, in his condition. Are you willing to risk that? Placenta conduct electricity with extreme efficiency, due to their being mostly water, and right now the resident genius is encased in a giant one, to say nothing of those triplets of his. Neither Grace or I can even tell if the babies are still alive, whatever form they may or may not have taken. We don’t want a suicidal Time Lord on our hands, even if we do manage to wake him up...”

 

But Jenny was ready for war. She had been born for it.

 

“I understand the risks, Doctor Jones. That’s why I want to test my theory on myself first.”

 

“Hello, all!” Grace Holloway said as she came in from where she’d been working in one of the TARDIS’s medlabs with a handful of books on Time Lord physiology, “... I found what looked to be Time Lord Biology books while you two were sleeping, but I can’t read them. Feels like I’m back in med school again, studying for my cardio exams. Jenny, do you think... what’s going on? Is the TARDIS so distracted she can’t translate for me? Or... is it that she won’t?”

 

 

Jenny looked at Martha; Martha looked at her, and then they both answered like twin sisters.

 

“Why would...never mind that! We found a way to wake him up!”

 

Grace frowned.

 

“I heard. Something about passing a low electric current through a weak point in the placenta-like cocoon that’s surrounding him. A nice idea, but... what if there is no weak point? The Captain might know, but, he’s still not back yet, is he? And... ”

 

She turned, staring off into the hallway where she’d come from. “Is it just me, or have the scratching sounds stopped?”

 

Jenny cocked her head, waving for the other two women to keep quiet as she set a hand to her ear.

 

“They have. But there’s something else, something hungry. That whirring!”

 

She leaped to her feet and ran for the doors.

 

“It’s that whirring I heard on the TimeStation! That means-”

 

Before she could step back, the TARDIS’ twin doors slammed open, and a one-armed figure appeared, casting a lone shadow before the ungodly whiteness outside.

 

“Hello, ladies, I’m back!” Jack said simply.

 

Then he was on the floor.


	12. A Bedtime Story, or, Aloysius and the CAT

The gentle caress of fluid met the man named Aloysius X. Leng Pendergast on the threshold of wakefulness. Unimpeded by the newborn blur of relaxation in which his consciousness floated, he surveyed a filmy landscape through silver eyes still hazed by the mind’s transition. Summoning something, he willed himself to focus, and came to understand the liquid that was flowing softly beneath his naked body. His clothes, his favorite black Italian suit and shoes, to be exact, returned to him with full sight, and so he rose, idling in awe at the picture of existence which rose up around his slight, tall frame. Water gushed beneath his shoes, pooling around the dark, glossy soles like fragrant silk. He took a step onto the bank, pausing a moment to gaze at the small rocks and sticks and leaves that were tossed along with the small stream as it bubbled along into unseen places beyond his location.

 

“... not where you expected to be standing, is it?”

 

Pendergast simply stared as a diminutive black animal leaped down from a low-hanging branch and landed near his left shoe. It nuzzled against his leg, then stuck its tail in the air and bounded two or three half steps away from him, looking back over its shoulder with enough kingly air for several aristocracies. Yes, this cat-like creature was definitely male. And definitively sentient. The agent smirked inwardly at this small intrigue, relying on his memories of his time on the cruise ship for guidance as he moved to speak on the matter.

 

“Quite. I expected to come into my own mind. But, I find instead that I’ve entered someone else’s. And if you don’t mind my asking, who might you be? I don’t recall seeing you before, so you must be a figment of the Doctor’s substantive imagination.”

 

The cat cocked his little head, grey eyes intent on the albino agent’s pale face.

 

“You’re smug enough, I’ll afford you that much. However, Aloysius my boy, I am no mere imagining. Come along like a good lad, and you shall see what gods I serve.”

 

Then he began to grow, rising in stature and muscle and weight until he was the size of a great, sleek panther. After this spurt, he stood shoulder to waist with the agent, who had taken only a step back from the spectacle in order to better observe the change.

 

At once, the great cat’s head was turned by the running of a mouse across the stream. A little white mouse it was, with little black eyes that shone like night in the bright flutter of the stream rushing past. The newly-shifted panther tensed, leaping upon the little white mouse, stifling all sounds it may have made with a swift swipe of a black paw, and then the thing was in its maw. A long tail, limp and pinkish, dangled abruptly from between two sharp teeth for just a moment before that too disappeared down the panther’s throat.

 

Pendergast again stepped back, careful of that mouth, now, and shivering with a fear he hadn’t felt since...

 

“Now, now, my lad,” the cat mused, like a parent who’d watched far too many children flush a perished goldfish from the shadow of the bathroom door, “... if you can’t handle the past, how do you hope to handle what is coming? This place is not for children, and the universe, for all its glory, is far harsher than I. You are needed, Aloysius. My Children of Time are besieged by Nightmares, while most of myself is caught here, deep in the throes of an unending Dream. Only you can reach the hart in which I slumber. But you must hurry. Up we go, lad. Allons-y!”

 

With that, the cat sank on its haunches, bidding the agent to mount it like a horse.

 

The agent blinked silver eyes at the CAT, who merely rested there upon the jagged stones like some great beast, waiting for him in that illusion of tameness it wore like a cloak. Then he mounted silently, and they began to move.

 

The power of the beast was exhilarating and fearful to feel beneath him as they flew through thicket after thicket, past lakes and valleys of bright blue water that reflected the ruby nature of strange marsh grass that popped up here and there along what paths their fleetness made. Huge trees filled his vision from time to time, separated only by grand expanses of plain or snow or water or softly flowing grass. Were those windows, among the trunks and branches? Oh my... they had to be houses, of some kind... this place was a memory of Home to the man he’d known as Doctor Bloom, down to the smell of the sweet foreign dirt under his nails.

 

“Very good, Pendergast!” quipped the cat liplessly, “... this is indeed a memory of Gallifrey. Too bad my idiot future self had to go and blow it up.”

 

“Are you calling yourself a fool, Doctor?” Pendergast said, smirking a bit against the wind in his face as he rode.

 

“And why not? Wouldn’t be the first time. Besides, that particular means to an end really couldn’t be helped. We were rotten to the core.”

 

The cat turned its face up to stare at him, grey-blue eyes flashing in wide slits full of wet, surplus emotion Aloysius had never seen in the man himself.

 

“Something was bound to happen, anyway. Tis a very good thing I was there, but I... ”

 

A growl erupted along the cat’s fanged lips, turning that half-feral grin into a squirming roar as the felinoid alien made a sharp turn toward a certain Tree which was cast in the shade of a mountain and half buried in hard ground.

 

“Enough talk, Aloysius. We are here to find the child I was and will be, then we’re off to the Citadel to save Yours Truly from himself.”

 

Then the cat rose up as he dismounted and became a biped, who stood slightly higher than even the albino’s approximate seven feet. Grey-blue eyes gleamed down at him from a face full of stars, full of blackness.

 

“I’m the Other, by the way.”

 

It stretched out a great velvet-padded paw, the claws retracted, and Aloysius shook.


	13. How Temperance and Solitude Fared in the Bath

“Oh! That’s lovely, but... oi! Why are you touching me there?”

 

“We are to prepare you. The Lady has proclaimed it.”

 

The new new new new new new new new new new Doctor ran his hands through his floppy brown hair and sighed. At least the locals in his memory were friendly... if a bit empty headed.

 

“Wait! What Lady? I haven’t seen any Lady but my TARDIS Iraj, and she’s disappeared to Rassilon knows where! Speaking of where, where is this Lady of yours? I have this sudden, insatiable desire to slap-”

 

But before he could finish his snap a woman’s voice pervaded him, like the breath of strong wind off a storm-battered cliff, and he was afraid. Suddenly he could feel the flutter of something soft on his neck, embracing him, a shroud of feathers weaving themselves about his body. Curious even in his trembling, he opened one eye to see what was engulfing him, and cried out its name in the music of his own tongue as golden light entwined itself through his brain, which was floating somewhere else, probably in his skull. He hoped so, anyway.

 

“Not... not feathers... hair! Long. Golden. Hair! It’s You! Daleg Ulv! You’re still... you’re still inside me?”

 

Then he wasn’t afraid anymore, because the Darkness came on him, and he blinked, only to glimpse three crisp roses lying on snow, like in a fairy tale told to children. He bent to pick each bloom delicately from the ice but was pricked as he retrieved each one, one prick, two pricks, three pricks. Blood welled along his finger and fell in three drops. Then a triplicate movement stirred in his long-lost belly, and he opened his eyes once more to the sound of rushing water, the hard gush of a cross-flow spilling from between his legs.

 

It was then, in the clutch of the first, the foreign liquid, that the pain came upon him. But when he screamed, only fluid filled his mouth.


	14. And Then What Happened?

Jenny and Martha dropped their pill packs and ran to Jack, who lay on his back on the TARDIS grating near the doors, still unconscious. No blood spewed from the stump of his missing arm, no bone stuck from the slice. It was just... clean. Clean as if it had never been there. As if Jack had never had a left arm. If only the Doctor were conscious... he might have known what could do that to Jack, Jack being what he was. Behind them, as they rushed to Jack’s side, the Lord of Time shivered in the GOS-F Stasis Incubator that had grown around him, his mostly-unconscious body struggling to expel its reclaimed natal burden into the sustaining gelatinous mass which enveloped him. No one noticed as the whole growing apparatus gave a querulous shake, and then broke like a ripened fruit, splitting enough to allow The Doctor’s writhing body egress in a thick gush of silverish, nutrient-rich jelly.

 

“Why is it so wet in here?” Jack murmured suddenly, rousing from his little nap just as the pregnant Gallifreyan’s white and shivering form collapsed to the TARDIS grating with the quiet thud of pillows hitting flesh.

 

That meant that some, if not all, of the Time Lord’s mental lights were lit, else the alien, skinny as he was, would have made a sound like the proverbial ton of bricks. Either that, or the TARDIS had done something to cushion his fall. Bigger on the inside, indeed. Jack lurched to his feet and scrabbled past the three women, anxious to get to the parent of his three children, his comrade in purpose, and assess the damage.

 

“Theta!”

 

Still, despite Jack’s cries, despite his frantic rush to help, the Doctor was already lying on the grates. He looked pale and shaken.

 

“Theta, talk to me!”

 

Jack realized he was shaking the alien, after a moment, and slid his hands around his lover’s heaving body to hold him. The stasis jelly was already crusting around the Time Lord’s mouth from exposure to the air. Theta wasn’t answering.

 

Suddenly the scratching noise clanged against the TARDIS’ hull again, banging and scraping as if there were billions of hard claws chafing the timeship’s sides...

 

Then the limp form in Jack’s arms arched, and more liquid spilled onto the TARDIS’ grates.

 

“Be a dear and help me to my feet, would you, Jack?”

 

Jack Harkness considered dropping him then. If only for an instant. But the Time Lord was still pregnant. Barely. And that meant that Jack had to take care of him until their three children were born, and then, it would be time to spank an old man’s bottom. The Time Agent laughed to himself as he pulled the alien upright with his one arm.

 

“There are voracious Things raking at the doors outside. Thought you might want to know.”

 

“Things? What sort of things, Jack? Are they tall? Thin? Ugly? Beautiful? Winged? Five-tongued? Hominid? Quadruped? Superfluous? Maleficent? unequivocally boring? Don’t have time to play twenty questions, me! Say something! I-”

 

He clutched his side, feeling his lips curve without him as a tiny foot dropped between his legs.

 

“Not. You! Not. Yet! Pull that foot back up where it belongs, Minyavellicanoramulette! And you, Koscheimarathnahvalvishnu! Stop trying to push your sister out through my vagina before it’s time! Do you _want_ me to regenerate? No, wait... don’t answer that. And stop stepping on poor Telperiondrikartian’s head! He’s trying to get some shut-eye before I have to give birth to you lot! Honestly!”

 

 

“Having trouble?” Jack said, winding an arm around the twinge-stricken Time Lord’s swollen waist.

 

“Always. They’re your fault, you know.”

 

“And I was never so proud to have personally contributed to the repopulation of your species, Doctor. But the girls are getting nervous, and you need to lie down. You’re looking paler than me after one of my less pleasant deaths. Come on. You can’t do anything about what’s outside in your state.”

 

The alien didn’t answer, only sucked air and clasped a hand to his big waist, gasping for breath as he stole a quick glance toward the console whilst he crumpled against the nearest available railing.

 

“Martha! Jenny! Grace! He’s awake, and giving birth on the grates! Get over here now!”

 

But Theta Sigma shook his head at him, closing his eyes as his exhausted brain struggled to partition nature’s rending of his innards. It was Time, no question. But... things? outside? He was dying to know, despite the distraction of early labor, and so he pushed himself to his feet, swaying like a drunkard. He lurched for the double doors but caught his foot on something, twisting and landing hard on his back against the floor grates.

 

“Oi!”

 

His yelp as his much-abused body struck metal echoed through the TARDIS as if his beloved ship had been no more than an empty room.

 

“Jack? Jack, I’ve fallen. The babies are descending into the birth canal and I need you!” he called, his voice wavering with strain in the silence that followed.

 

Silence had not been something he’d expected, and he struggled to breathe for a moment as the sudden, uncomfortably intimate knowledge that no one was coming hit him in the hearts like a jolt of pure huon. Eyesight drifting in and out in blotches of patchy grey-red, he managed another railing, then another, shoving forward toward his fears. And there were so many of them, outside. And inside. So many shadows waited to eat him once he set too far a foot inside his own mind... but why were his senses on fire? His every nerve felt pricked and raw, like shards of glass pressed to a baby’s feet. A shudder ran through him, quick as water at the thought, and his fingers found his belly again. So he started to rub, overwhelmed for a moment with the ripeness of his womb. There was something outside. He needed to protect his children. Slowly, his gaze filtered over the still forms of Jack, Martha, Jenny and Grace. They were all frozen in place, almost as if... Rarely-used neurons flickered at this, humming to life in the Oncoming Storm that was his electrical mind. Grace. Grace. Grace. __

_“Come on you stupid, senile old fool!”_ He screamed harshly at himself, and flinched as blood from the sores of his hoarseness ran down his throat even as the tiny scars healed themselves.

 

“ _Think think think! You can deal with your faults later! There are children to protect!”_

 

But there was no segue for idle postulation in the spare remaining moments before whatever it was broke through his TARDIS’ defenses. __

_“Come on, Theta! Use that colossal brain and get them out of this! There’s no more time!”_

 _Grace._

 _Time._

 _Grace._

 _Time._

 _Time... grace... time... Grace!_

 _Temporal Grace!_

Mind wheeling, The Doctor snarled his rebellion with a torturous howl, merely to stumble the few short steps to the central console and half-lean, half-collapse indelicately over it. His much-abused nether muscles, taut and glistening, querulous from a year-long embrace, chose that precise moment to contract for the final time, promptly shoving three new lives out onto the TARDIS grates. Ignoring the mushy remains of the organic preservative jelly as he eased himself against the cool validium, he tore the strength to speak from his lips and spoke softly to the Ship, who had ceased humming her concern in his ears and busied herself with shielding them all from the Things outside.

 

“Iraj. I know what you’ve done. You’ve stopped time around them, haven’t you? Put up a Temporal... Grace Field! That’s my good... girl! I knew you hadn’t left me... ”

 

Then the exhausted Time Lord lolled his head leftward to gaze through glazing eyes at Aloysius Pendergast, who was seated nearby and, by all accounts, untouched by the bubble of Static Time the TARDIS had created around the others, while the TARDIS bristled and hummed and popped in dis-ease and the Cloister Bell rang his head off.

 

“I know, I know! I’m too weak to be doing this right now, but if those things outside are what I think they are, suffice it to say I will not be amused if they touch one hair on my children’s heads. And I don’t just mean the ones I gave birth to that are gonna be mewling for daddy  before it’s time for tea! Course, it’s always time for tea, really... on the other hand, Beautiful Ship that you are, it was very considerate of you to short out the viewers so that I in my delicate state couldn’t _see_ the outside, by the way. So,”

 

He reached toward the albino, hands clasping those white temples in welcome. Theta Sigma, it seemed, was going in.

 


	15. Prithee! And When Did the Mute Learn to Speak?

“... and look you there! The Rapunzelite woman in that picture is my, well, _his_ sister, Innocet. She grew her hair to rather ludicrous length in protest of various deceitful maneuverings and proceeded to blame her once-beloved cousin Theta Sigma for the death of their father-figure, the Patriarch of their House. Theta Sigma is the Doctor, in case you’re wondering, and I know you are. It was the Housekeeper, in the kitchen, with the candlestick. Innocet killed herself once she realized his innocence, and well... once I, I mean the Doctor, was cleared of the Patriarch’s murder, things went to Wherever in a chips basket, which was, frankly, a waste of a good metaphor.”

 

Aloysius watched the CAT pause in its tale just long enough to poke a look at him from those jewel-like eyes.

 

“One supposes it escalated into something akin to a familial feud?”

 

The felinoid cried a laugh like a child’s plea into the ancient air, and the agent found a new source of fascination in the short absence of tête-à-tête. There was a shadow, small and deliberate, playing in among the broken bits of chairs and sticks of bookshelves. A small frame was quite visible to the albino’s heightened sense of sight, and soon the CAT was eyeing this person as well, flicking a cool tongue in and out as the figure came, mouse-like, into view.

 

“I remember it...” the boy in the corner said softly, scraping a hand through straggles of deep brown hair.

 

There was blood on his hands, too much blood, and Aloysius Pendergast could not help but recognize the signs of struggle in the mud on his shoes, or the smudges of grime on his shirt. And the tell-tale scratches sealed by dust on his arms and face told no better.

 

“I remember breath where there wasn’t any. I remember the first pico-second in which my lungs drank their fill.”

 

Then the boy’s eyes turned to the CAT and he said, “I don’t want to remember anything bad!”

 

The boy stepped away, his young face scrunched with tears and stained with the rage of someone who’d done... what he’d done. Pendergast couldn’t help it. Instantly he thrust a hand out, and the boy took it, shaking vigorously. Trouble was, the agent only realized he’d done it after it was over. A very long minute.

 

“My name is... well you don’t need to know that. Koschei won’t talk to me anymore, because of what I did to Torvic. This... ”

 

He held up his reddened hands. It could have been finger-paint.

 

“This is Torvic’s blood. I called Death with it still on my hands. It’s always on my hands... why did you come here, anyway? It’s dusty here. Did you know we’re underground? Oh yes. The House was buried. Something about patricide. It’s all nonsense, leastways.”

 

“Oh come on. Don’t you think it’s time you gave up the ruse?”

 

The CAT turned to them both, eyeing them with eyes like frozen blood.

 

A small hand grasped his this time, the grip of those young fingers full of a confidence at odds with their age.

 

“Don’t listen to it, Aloysius. That creature is not the Other.”

 

“Of course it’s not. I was wondering when you’d be able to join us,” said the agent, turning to the child even as the boy’s body grew into that of a man.

 

A man he recognized. An old friend.

 

Theta Sigma straightened to his full height beside Aloysius then, allowing himself one of his lopsided grins as the agent moved to give him space.

 

“I’m here now, Iraj, you naughty thing you! Why don’t you show the nice agent what you’ve been hiding? Come on! There’s my good girl!”

 

Suddenly the CAT roiled, shifting like sand in water, all blacks and greens and swirling creams until a new form was glimpsed in the dust. A woman stood there, a pale, tall slip with apple cheeks and long blonde hair straight as reeds. She was dressed in sailor blues, and her eyes held the promise of power, nestled in deep brown pools of innate intelligence that gleamed forth with pure predestination.

 

“Romana. I remember the last time you took her form. Iraj, this is not a game. Stop it now.”

 

Even standing unclothed as he was, psychologically naked and bared to the dust of his House, the refuse of so many scathing memories, the Doctor was, in mental avatar, just as formidable as in the normal sensual world. Pendergast found himself awed of this man, just as he had been before, all those years ago, when he as a child had met the Doctor in a moment of long-suffering youth. The ancient alien had taught him things. And he would never forget. He stepped forward, calling to himself all of the shining jewels of mental prowess the Doctor had restored.

 

“My name is Aloysius,” he drawled thickly, taking a step toward the Construct, with a smile to melt molasses. “I have a daughter who is in a rather unique predicament. You see, my Great Uncle Antoine was a genius who collected several rare substances and chemicals with which to create a poison-delivery weapon. The life-prolonging elixir he discovered served only as means to his end. To such ends, he conducted... experiments on the derelict and homeless of 1800’s New York. Consequently, my daughter, whom I have since adopted, was born 117 years ago, almost to the day. Her older sister died so she could live, and my Uncle, in turn, raised her as his own child over these hundred-odd years, both of them knowing that she wasn’t his blood. It became a somewhat healthy relationship, until my brother murdered my Uncle and left him in a display case for me to find.” 

 

He glided toward the Romana-thing, careful to keep his dialogue carefully timed to the glimpses she kept taking toward the Doctor, to throw her off.

 

“You can imagine my angst. It is continual, much like the Doctor’s, in some regard, though not at all to such a scale, in any case. I could never claim his burden and hope to remain sane, regardless of my family’s disposition toward exotic psychosis, nor would I ever attempt to try, to my great regret.”

 

The Construct nodded, then turned to look at the Doctor once more. But he wasn’t where she remembered him standing. Wild with confusion, she looked around the dusty room, frantic for her beloved Time Lord. Her lips parted, and again the keening cry the CAT had uttered poured from her mouth, indeed, from her whole -body-. She had been bested. Now unwilling to keep Romana’s form, Iraj sank, blue and bald and voiceless, to the ground, her golden eyes to the dust, and wept dry tears. Lanky arms wrapped around her at once, petting and holding and squeezing, until at last the room began to shimmer before Pendergast’s eyes.

 

“There, there, love. It’s almost over. There now, that’s it. My Beautiful, Wonderful, Perfect Ship. But seriously, if you’d taken Rose’s form I’d really have been cross. Ah! Now then! Do you promise not to lead us about with carrots and such anymore? Well, at least on this particular problem, eh? Eh? Gaah! There’s my pretty one! We really ought to get to the point of all this before those bloody Chronovores eat us out of house and home... ”


	16. The Last Supper of Thete

“And that, my dear Doctor, is why I had my aunt Cornelia committed. We simply couldn’t have her doing such things. There wouldn’t have been any relatives left, I daresay, once she got her hands on a goodly portion of rat poison, or anything sharp... ah! Capital. The others. They’re coming to.”

 

Pendergast looked to the alien, who was only half naked now in what was the second black Italian suit jacket he’d had cause to donate to science. Perhaps the Time Lord hadn’t heard him speak? No. Impossible, with the Doctor’s hearing and the tiny span of distance between them, not to mention the applied selective acoustics of the console room. The Doctor was on the floor, scooping up his three infants into a surprisingly strong bear hug, considering what he’d just experienced. Then again, perhaps this younger form, his permanent, eleventh regeneration, had mislaid some of that great burden, to have spoken so candidly about some of his more trying experiences, albeit within the purely mental environ of the TARDIS’s ship-mind.

 

“Come on, my pretties! Up we go, away from those dangerous doors!”

 

Time Lords hadn’t been born in far too long, Jack decided as he stirred on the grating beside Martha and Jenny.

 

“Captain Harkness and I can take care of the others and the triplets while you fetch yourself a change of clothes, Doctor,” Pendergast paused, eager to see the alien rest himself after this latest trial, “... besides, I believe I heard you groan, just now.”

 

Silver eyes made a point of sticking themselves to the Doctor’s back, and being the slightly empathic telepath he was, the Time Lord felt the agent’s soft rebuke like a razor’s keen across the slick of his spine.

 

“Agh.  You’re right. But try not to do that again, old man. There’s still a bit of mental bruising up here from my having to confront Iraj so soon after labor.”

 

That grin played across his lips, showing teeth, at long last. Was this regeneration truly recovered of the long wound?

 

“Oh! And, erm... ” the Doctor put a hand to his head, masking it by running long fingers through his thick, shaggy forelocks, “... you know, Jack... before the girls wake up, I think I would like to, erm... ”

 

Harkness smirked.

 

“Kiss me? Why yes, Doctor, I do think that an inordinate amount of kissing is in order... ”

 

“Captain Harkness is always like that, isn’t he? It’s rather amusing.”

 

“Isn’t he?” Theta Sigma grinned at the albino, who seemed to have reserved a vintage laugh for just that moment.

 

“Ah, boys, boys! Give me a hand. I’ve just given birth to triplets, and had a row with the mistress on top of that, after all!”

 

He waited, breath bated like a man condemned. But not a grumble, not a clink, not a trickle of heat echoed from the TARDIS at his probing little dig, and he let himself sag for a moment against the console.

 

“Doctor?” Agent Pendergast swept toward him, a white blur of smoke, but Jack was closer and reached him first, hands squirming gingerly around his still-sore waist, steadying him as he slid to the gratings.

 

“Easy there, Theta. Don’t do things like that! Makes me question your manhood... ”

 

The Time Agent made sure his fingers were a slight breath against the alien’s bruised muscles, careful to provide that familiar resilience he knew Theta so loved him for, and yet, after a few long draws of air and the creeping vines of an anxious pallor, Jack’s nervous joking remained unheeded, until-

 

“Do you think she hates me?”

 

At last. A response from the quavering temporal noble he held with his one arm.

 

“She?” Jack asked it cautiously, his intimate experience with countless women and one hormonal Time Lord telling him he didn’t necessarily need an immediate answer.

 

“You can’t mean Grace. She was worried sick about you. We all were. Now that you’re awake, we should probably, I don’t know, get to worrying about those nasty little things outside. They chewed my arm off, you know? Only, it wasn’t really like chewing, more like it was never there. I don’t like it.”

 

A groan of sarcasm from the patient.

 

“Of course you don’t like it. Who would, you silly git? It’s not as if-”

 

Abruptly the Doctor sloughed all pretense of weakness and stood without help, ignoring the grim protestations of his still-recovering body in the flurry of eureka which had evidently ensued.

 

“Let me see that,” he growled, and snatched at the stump of Jack’s arm, thumbing the point of amputation.

 

The skin was smooth and precise, like a shorn piece of metal. Then the alien held his forehead to the edge of cut flesh and waited and closed his eyes, hoping that expectation would find him worthy of the proof he sought. He scrambled backwards suddenly, his movements jagged and aqueous in the wake of his departure, until he found himself slammed into the opposite circular, his back indented by the pod-like extrusions what lined every wall.

 

The two men watched him squirm, hands to his head like some crazed and moaning supplicant, struggling against whatever terror had touched him.

 

“They... too strong! Too... too many minds! Going to... lose myself, in the storm!”

 

His fingers, claw-like, scrabbled over the circular as he made his staggering way toward the double doors that would lead him to the outside, to the Earth, what had been grass and cities and fields of people. But it wouldn’t be, once he left the safe confines of the TARDIS. And soon, whatever protective shell he had left would be stripped away by Them, by the Things in his mind. He could not contain them for long, but if he could just get out the doors, the others would be safe. His children would be safe. At least for another few minutes before the Chronovores used him up. His connection to the TARDIS was still there, for some reason, so he would not go quietly like before with _Her_ at the little stone church, but oh yes. He _would_ go.

 

Jack Harkness moved, as Aloysius and he shared a thought in the deep quiet. They looked to the triplets mewling softly by the center console, then to the screaming alien before them. He was in so much pain. Then they did the only thing they could. Each man took an arm, opened one door with a balanced foot and...


	17. Suffer the Little Children

Two of the prey stood at the mouth of The Ship. One of them, Tliuk had tasted before. An arm had been taken, erased from the rotting web of temporal mnemonics the little Time Lords had lived for. Raising a white forelimb, Tliuk examined his own arm, pinching gingerly at the flesh in one motion. Then he rent it, scratching through to the muscle and bone beneath with an exquisitely formed claw. Only moments had passed since he’d changed the shape of the digit. He’d done it without thought, nearly without intent. But there had been intent. That much intent, at least, had fueled the taking of the strange human’s arm. The taste had been exquisite. Much beyond that, however, was a disconcerting blur. So long had it been since the birth of their kind, reflected in fragments from the twilight of Before. So long, millennia, upon millennia, upon millennia, it had been. And now, these two humans and the Time Lord known as The Doctor stood at the threshold of The Ship, waiting for their fate. The Time Lord was in distress, screeching its body pain like a keening star.

 

Lifting with grace from his perch in a soft needled pine, Tliuk reveled in the drink of wind that splashed across his white skin as he drew closer to The Ship. Never had Tliuk found occasion to consider anything. Never before had he cared. His only concern was to consume the flaws that seeped through what remained of the Web.  At least it had been. But the taste of his last meal had made him aware of mindlessness, of the hunger for temporal anomaly that was even now driving his brethren to claw at the shield surrounding the Ship. They wanted to Consume. Tliuk could feel their wanting in the back of his mind. And the Time Lord was there, too. Affected, distracted and in pain from contact with the hungry hoard of Chronovores, but there. An idea formed, and Tliuk landed, his decision made before he had left his branch. He would meet the prey, and take a pleasing form to speak with them as he was. The Time Lord, were he not too weary to fulfill his piece, would do the rest.

 

Tliuk changed form as his naked feet touched the grass in front of The Ship, where the two humans and the Time Lord were waiting.

 

Suddenly, the Time Lord stumbled, slipping into unconsciousness even as he leaned against the strange-smelling human whose arm Tliuk had eaten. The Time Lord smelt of blood. Of blood, and death, and most recently, birthing. He had been with child a short while ago. Tliuk flew down, aiming his lithe effeminate body toward the three of them. The humans could not breathe, so swift was his entry unto their personal space. With a chortle of pure exuberance Tliuk swept the exhausted Time Lord up in his arms and lifted him some feet into the air, a distance once and half the height of the paler, impassive human who stood a ways apart from the other. Brushing thick brown hair away from the Renegade’s blanched face, Tliuk planted a calculated kiss at the point which humans called the crown chakra, and, having felt the strangest urge to linger, moistened the Time Lord’s forehead two more times. But then, Tliuk was new to sentiment. The bipedal, humanoid form he had taken, waifish and white and winged, was called beautiful by many names and races. He had never noticed or cared, before. Was it his last meal that had done this? Tliuk thought that he might question the Time Lord on it, when the man woke again. His meager bulk, as with all Time Lords, was deceptively hyper-dimensional. But the Doctor, now, his biochemistry was unique, even... temporally fluctuant. Still, his dead weight was no hardship to Tliuk, and through the mechanism of his newly-discovered foresight Tliuk knew himself quite unwilling to leave his new charge to the fate desired by those more gruesome of his brethren.

 

“Be safe before me, oh children of Sol,” he called, singing in his twenty voices, his very breath a chorus as he whispered down his proclamation, “... I am Tliuk. And this man, this...Lord of Time, asleep in my arms, was once my enemy by default.” Tliuk then drifted one foot toward the softly swaying grass and landed there, his multi-planar vision casting the humans and their surroundings in a haze of sparkling prisms and rainbow-mists.

 

“Funny...” muttered one of the humans, the one Tliuk had tasted of, “... the Doctor had a run-in with some angels here a while ago. They sent a girl back in time in order to feed on her temporal signature. You get me?”

 

Tliuk gave the merest incline of his head, and then bade a crystalline laugh erupt from his pasty lips.

 

“I am certain of it. The Doctor is more than just a Time Lord. And through the taste of your temporally-static flesh I have grown to share purpose with compassion. My brothers and sisters will not feed upon this world to-day. Of this I am also certain.”

 

One-Arm did nothing at first, only stared Tliuk down. Such panache... in this man, and the time-scent of the others nearby, Tliuk could finally see why the Doctor loved them so.

 

“Let me get this straight. You think you’ll survive the countless billions of your kid brothers and sisters long enough to attend the after-party? Ha.”

 

The Chronovore simply smiled at this, and settled the Time Lord against his chest.

 

“No. But when my Master the Old One awaketh, we shall not need to quarrel. His power is great, great enough to halt the wars of Heaven. And lo!”

 

He paused, exalted as the Doctor roused himself within the cocoon of Tliuk’s cool embrace.

 

“He is waking. The touch of my kindred upon his brain has opened his eyes to his true nature.”

 

What happened next was an almost worshipful silence. Tliuk knelt in reverence on the grass, and laid The Doctor’s body out upon the moist green blades. The Time Lord was indeed stirring, gleaming with a kind of presence that had before been absent. Naked, curled on his back like an unborn child, slowly he unfurled himself unto the watching eyes and stood, eyes still closed, as three red wings grew out from his back and dried in the air. Then he opened his face to some form of wakefulness, and his eyes shone with the brilliance of molten gold, like two doubloons baked to a sheen in the hot sun.

 

But to two men’s eternal sorrow, there seemed no trace of the man beneath.


	18. Under Ice, or, What Happened Once the Lights Were Off

Jenny could feel herself drifting. Her eyes felt stuck open, as if someone had suspended her in the ebb and flow of time. She could see what was happening, but she couldn’t move. And the TARDIS wasn’t answering her. With the slow care of a mossy stone, she watched the figure move about the ship in clipped movements. It flitted here, there, searching carefully for something in the strange dark that now filled the once-bright console room. Once-bright, for just a few moments before she had watched helpless as her father awoke from his coma, watched as he bled his half-grown triplets onto the grates. Watched as pain struck him like a gong and resounded through the two men who knew they couldn’t let him live. Still as a standing stone in an ancient lake, Jenny could not feel the brain waves of the other women. They were completely frozen, fixed in a temporal loop initiated by some obscure whim of the Ship they were all now trapped in. But the figure was not. It knew its way around, almost as if it had been for tea several times in the library, or left something out in the kitchen. Or talked with her father like they were old friends. For _It_ was a man. She had heard him muttering to himself in the dark of the dimmed circle of twisting coral beams and panels and grates and softly gleaming devices that filled the console room. However, Grace, Martha and herself were still stuck like flies fixed in gossamer. Her father had said ‘I never would,’ to the man who had murdered her on Messaline. But this man, he seemed to contradict her father’s purpose with his very being. Still, they must have been friends once, else why would he know so much about the workings of this particular TARDIS? About her father? He had disabled the ship just as Jenny had become aware again. She thought, from the way he lurched into action at the slightest noise, that he must be in a hurry. But why? Then she remembered. The things outside, the things that had attacked Jack Harkness.

 

“Life is full of little helpless moments, little girl. But an infant like you would never understand. Hah! Especially not with dear _Thete_ for a father.”

 

Jenny would have shivered, if she could have moved. The man knew she was aware of her surroundings, and was chatting to her as though out for an afternoon tea.

 

“What? Oh come now. Don’t tell me dear daddy hasn’t told you about me? Ohhh, my sweet little strumpet! Your father never could do domestic. He simply can’t keep still.”

 

He patted her head, cracking a small, lopsided grin on one side of his face like a nasty little doll. He was an ultimate parody of the Doctor then, a dark thing to stand against at all costs. Someone to be saved.

 

“That was marvelous work on the Timestation, by the way. Pure, sodding brilliance. Honestly, my pet! The way you aggravated uptight, nervous Ushas to distraction. I nearly died laughing. It took an effort to play the part when you showed up again, in the control room. Did you like the bone-shattering crunch? The wet slide of meat beneath bruised flesh? I’m rather fond of it, myself.”

 

Then his fingers reached for her cheek again, and he bent toward her, as though to steal a kiss, but he only mimed a cheeky aunt’s pudgy pinch and then danced away in sloppy two-step. His black eyes were two cracked marbles, ancient and youthful, and soured by centuries of murderous intent, and they met hers from the darkest place in the console room. He smiled whitely.

 

“I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. I’m the Master.”


	19. Angels with Dirty Faces: Redux

“He doesn’t know us,” murmured the Solian on the right, the one who was missing the arm.

 

“Indeed. That would seem to be the case.”

 

The Solian on the left was quite different, pale and thin and silver-eyed like a piece of exquisite driftwood on an equally exquisite beach. But the Old One had slept too long without flesh. He stood on the soft green stuff called grass and scrubbed a softly tapered limb through the messy brown mass atop what must have been his head and swayed.

 

“You need sustenance, my Lord. The time you have spent asleep has surely taxed you. However, my siblings hunger mindlessly for this world. Perhaps you could... dissuade them by... satisfying your own hunger?” Tliuk whispered the words at the Old One’s shoulder like a mantra.

 

Snapping claws together then, the Chronovore fashioned a white cloth from the ethers and gently draped the man’s bare skin.

 

“There now, Master. It is not the best solution, and before you awoke you would have been most vehemently against the idea. But you also know it is the only way.”

 

Silver-blue eyes watched this, noting stance, depression of feet, the fall of shoulder. Then Aloysius Pendergast mentioned this observation to Captain Jack. The Captain, too, had been watching. __

_“Jack. The Chronovore seems to be worried the Doctor may consider breaking fast with us.”_

 

Pendergast was careful to speak only within the Captain’s mind, being a man somewhat less inhibited by the Doctor’s brand of absolute-with-conditions pacifism. Yet, much like The Doctor he knew when to fire a gun, and had done so, many times, another trait not quite dissimilar to those of the man Jack had come to love. His tone was not without amusement, but the situation was still inconceivably grave, a fact the albino FBI agent never failed to make clear with his lack of expression.

 

“Tliuk,” said Pendergast, not bothering to meet the creature’s alabaster gaze, “... the Doctor has just given birth to triplets within the Ship. And, he has stated before that we humans were made in the image of the Time Lords. So, I think it wise to try a little experiment. What do you believe might happen if we brought the newborns out here, where he could hear their cries? As I recall, human males can lactate given the proper instinctual incentive. If we were to-”

 

“I was aware of many things before your sun was golden, Solian Child.”

 

Tliuk gave a smooth little smile, showing multitudes of fangs as he waved down the agent with a whitewashed wrist.

 

“I have no wish to see your world destroyed at the jaws of my less discerning brethren, just as I know my Lord would not have, when he was still only a Time Lord. Just as I have faith he yet will not. Do as thou wilt, for I would see my Lord regain his faculty.”

 

The strangeness of thick sound interrupted everything then, and the TARDIS doors slipped open once, just long enough to let a slim man through with a hostage.

 

“Having a problem with arousal, Captain?” the Master quipped, striding up to Jack with one hand stuck fast in Jenny’s hair.

 

“Is that really necessary?” Aloysius said with a cringe set to his jaw. Jack knew he hadn’t seen that look on anyone but The Doctor. He would have remembered such a grimly determined face. If... _when_ they got out of this, the agent was going to meet his team. Aloysius Pendergast was better than any of them.

 

“Oh, are you drooling over the bureau suit, Captain Harkness? How posh slut of you. One would guess you were already undressing him with your eyes, but let’s not be vulgar.”

 

The renegade Time Lord flourished a wrist, swaying the bones of his fingers like a cat dangling a bird from his mouth as he looked the only other Time Lord present up and down and up again, the thin smile crusting his lips dry and thick as old blood. “Why, Theta... look who I’ve got. Considerably more than a jar of dirt, I think. Although, that was a brilliant touch with the hand in the jar. Very Middle Victorian Cabinet Chic. Then again,” He roughed up the girl’s honey hair, digging his fingers into her scalp and taking in her scent with the heavy thirst of the starving. “She smells like Gallifrey, and she’s not half bad with her tongue. I wonder if she does windows?”

 

The Master’s hands crept across Jenny’s mouth and forced it, pinching her tongue between two slim fingers. Then he waggled it like a toy on a string at the unmoving Time Lord become Old One who once had been the Doctor, grinning as a child should grin when presented with the asked-for gift on naming day.

 

“How did you do it? How did you lift the Pythia’s curse? __I want to know! You’ve got four children! Tell me how or she dies! Then I start the adoption process._ ”_

 

“Pythia?” a soft murmur from the Old One. Tliuk ignored The Master and came to his Lord, a leaf in silks against the winds that bore the Chrononivorous horde as countless of the Time-hungry creatures hovered above them, eager to feed. Soon they would descend...

 

The Master followed a distant screech of frenzy upward and saw them, staying above the fray like vengeful angels.

 

“Well. How nice of you to invite friends, Doctor.”

 

He met the silver eyes of one beast, thrusting his hand out toward the Old One in gesture.

 

“I’m the oldest one here, but do eat him first. He’s far more annoying!”

 

“If the situation weren’t so grave, I would almost find it entertaining. What say you, Jack?”

 

Aloysius mused, pursing his fingers in a pyramid across his pelvis.

 

Jack allowed himself a slight grin, feeling some of the cold leave his bones at the possibility of action.

 

“Have something in mind?”

 

“I broke out of prison once. A remote operation set up months in advance by two dear friends of mine.”

 

“It must have been hard on you. Did the guards find out? Did the prisoners?”

 

“One almost did. I had to incapacitate him. And telling the prisoners was the key to begin with. But, I was forced to kill an inmate.”

 

Aloysius turned and stared at the Master and his silent captive.

 

“I would rather not have to do that again. However... ”

 

This was all Jack needed, and he gave a nod to the other man, a signal that he understood the game the agent was playing.

 

“It’s all right, Agent. We all have done what we had to. Him most of all, and I’m no exception either. I’m also a lot older than first glance would tell you.”

 

Jack kept talking, straining hard to distract the Master with words while he spoke to Tliuk with what limited telepathic talent he possessed.

 

 _“Don’t kill this man, Tliuk. Your Lord may not forgive you. We will free his daughter in secret from inside the Ship. She will want to fight, and is more than capable. Help her.”_

 

He left the Chronovore with that thought as they both rushed back inside the TARDIS.

 

“Oh, they left you out here to rot. How’s that for complacency? I always said they were damnable little rats. Never could see why you stuck around with monkeys. Watching Ushas squirm was far more amusing. Wasn’t it, Jenny girl?”

 

Another blood-stultifying pinch, delivered to her right cheek. This was good, she thought. He hadn’t noticed yet. The Temporal Grace Shield had started fading almost as soon as the two men had re-entered the TARDIS.

 

But soon, the sound of rustling reached every ear, and footsteps were heard. Just two, two quiet footsteps on soft grass, squelching wetly in the thick sludge of mud and rain-damp, rocky ground. Someone rising to their feet. Then the Old One turned to his acolyte and said three words. Only three little words, but even before they were spoken the Master could feel powers shifting, changing, Timelines roiling with the weight of the newly-awakened Power before him. And he knew fear at these words, which echoed thus, in chorus upon chorus, layer and layer and layer of music so clear. These were the patterns that had once broken worlds like glass. A relic of the Before Time what had pierced the Universe. Three words like distant bells of war.

 

“I will feed.”

 

 

Then, the Ancient who once had been a Time Lord spun upright like a backwards top and lunged for The Master’s chest.


	20. And Just When Did the Beggar Acquire -That- Horse?

“... what do you mean you left him out there? He needs medical attention!”

 

But Jack Harkness had fled to another room, away from the console area, and away from them. There was no answer over the comm.

 

“Wait, Martha,” Grace said, cracking her neck from side to side and looking around in a toss of dirty blonde hair, “... they had a reason. You know these men, think it through.”

 

“But he’s out there with the Master!”

 

“Ah, I hate to interrupt, but aren’t you forgetting someone?” the albino interjected, tossing silver eyes at both the women, who were staring at him.

 

Martha blinked, staring at the pill pack on the grates. Grace followed her with a gasp when she saw what else was on the floor. “Oh god. He’s given birth. Did the TARDIS do something to us? I don’t remember anything since Jack collapsed on the vestibule.”

 

“Me either. The only thing I see is... a lot of old blood and something like post-pregnancy discharge, among other things. How was he when you left him, Jack?”

 

Dark hands dragged in the drying liquid on the grates, thumbing the thickened remains of an obvious afterbirth.

 

Grace was at her shoulder, anxiety clenching her slender hands into fists as she stared at the discard.

 

“I agree. There’s far too much blood here. Could some of it be Jenny’s? I mean, she isn’t here. Out there then? Two guesses as to how _that_ happened.”

 

A fresh glare shaded the albino through her spectacles.

 

“I do not take any responsibility for Miss Jenny’s whereabouts at the current time. But, that may be a moot point. Look behind you, Doctor Holloway.”

 

And there was Jenny, peeking out from beneath the console.

 

“Hullo! I woke up before you two did. Thought I’d do a bit of tinkering to clear my head.”

 

“Like father like daughter, I suppose,” said Grace, scrubbing a hand through her straggling ponytail.

 

At this a triumphant smirk crawled so swiftly across the agent’s face Martha could have sworn she’d imagined it.

 

“And what was that for, Mister? You know something about what’s going on! You’ve been out there. Both of you have. I need to treat him! Let me go!”

 

“I second the notion,” Doctor Holloway said from the ground where she crouched, her tennis shoes crunching softly in the dry crust of the Doctor’s birth-blood.

 

“So what will it be, Agent Pendergast? We both know you’re a gentleman, so... ”

 

Martha’s hand was on her kit. Grace’s arm was still wrapped around the books she’d brought from the TARDIS infirmary.

 

“Doctors, please... professionalism abounds. Although, I fear I really must insist.”

 

He turned to the Doctor’s daughter, who had what resembled a glinting, pen-sized socket wrench in her hand. “Jenny? Perhaps you can convince them. You yourself know best that the course of action for us in this situation is no action at all. Dear Martha and Grace appear to be in fervent disagreement with my argument. And,” he added, just baring his pristine white teeth in the somber line of a delicate half-smile, “... it would be wise to prove your point now, as this is, perhaps, the last moment of calm before the oncoming storm.”

 

 “Jenny?”

 

Both women turned to her in unison, anxious to have some news in light of the genteel and immoveable southern-born agent.

 

The blond girl stiffened, raising up to height beneath those anxious gazes.

 

She said, “I apologize. But this was the only way to distract them while Captain Harkness and Agent Pendergast brought my non-autonomous functions back on-line. The Master is outside, with Theta and his daughter, whose form I borrowed in order to facilitate the ruse. I nearly failed him in my selfishness.”

 

Martha gaped. She knew who this was, as did Grace Holloway. They both turned then, for Jenny had begun to glow golden in the dark of the still-shadowed circular, and the streams of crisp light given off by her body were more than enough to hold the peripheral attention of two confused Homo sapiens.

 

Pendergast nodded acceptance, as he was wont, and the shining being who stood before them dimmed. Then the lights flicked on in the console room, and everything was clear.

 

“Well, now, ladies... ” said the agent, crossing one leg over the other while he eased his lean frame against the double doors and shot them both a grin.

 

“I don’t believe you’ve met the TARDIS.”


	21. The Man from Gallifrey, or, I Was a Free Man in Paris, Sod It

“Dad! No! Can’t you see he’s sick?”

 

In the moment of death, a shade was cast o’er the Master’s face, and he felt not a blow, but a swift, cool breeze, which breathed on his close golden hair and filled his lungs. As he lay on the grass, he could see the face of his childhood friend toss itself aside from his savior as though she too were an angelic creature. The thing playing puppet with the Doctor’s body dove backward, rising into the air and curling in tight somersault twice before landing barely two metres away, eyes burning like molten rock, though not with anger. Not with anything. Just... consideration. Reflection, perhaps? How could he not have noticed those three red wings before? This was not the Theta he knew. The boy he had known. This was not the friend who as a child had betrayed him to the Dark Places. The drowning pools of bleak eternity, fit only for the destined. His hands were shaking as he rose, and there were streaks of browning grass on his black suit. At least the Drums were gone and he could think. He felt himself stiffen from far away, then fall, as though a fog had lifted and he the last one to notice. Indeed, since the Drums had gone, he could almost-

 

Gone? The Drums? But they _never_ left him. _Never. That meant... oh Rassilon, that meant he wasn’t... mad._ Koschei, who had been the Master, sank to the grass behind the blonde child called Jenny. Realization, hot and wet, burned tracks down his cheeks for what must have been millennia, but when he looked up again the girl was still  kneeling at his side, protecting him. He was _Free_! His mind worked circles upon circles, calculating, referencing, devising. How long? Long enough, he reasoned. Long enough to set one thing right, at least. The madness would stay gone long enough for him to help. It had to.

 

“Get back to the TARDIS, Jenny-girl. I lost the right to his mercy the moment I left Gallifrey.”

 

That said, he pushed himself to his feet and shoved her down, back, away from the creature in front of him.

 

“I said, -go.- You don’t really want to see me _get it_ , do you? I mean really... ”

 

His hand flew up, twirling like a curl of paper as he made a flourish with long, slender fingers, then snapped two, and Jenny found herself backing away toward her father’s Ship. Toward safety. She shook her head, breaking his hold and spinning to face them both. The two men were locked gaze in gaze, the angelic, unearthly youth her father the Doctor had become, and the fortyish Master. Old enemies, older friends, she assumed from what she had gleaned, tidbits from her dad, and outright admittance from the older man.

 

“Do you remember what you said, the day I was born from that machine on Messaline? The day I died?” she said as she drew herself up and bounded toward the Doctor.

 

Koschei watched her with a small portion of himself, noting points of comparison between herself and her progenitive source. He had expected this.

 

“Well, I did try, Theta. And now she’s coming over here. See how that turned out.”

 

He shrugged at the Old One, who merely blinked in vague acknowledgement.

 

“Rather like that prize Malkan bull you trapped in Ming-Lao’s Water Closet back in Academy, eh? Oh, those were good times.”

 

“What do I care for these children of Sol? They are below me,” said the Old One, absently tugging on the white silk ribbon that snaked about his person, “... I have removed Death’s influence from you only because I consider you a far more interesting plaything when you aren’t drunk with power.”

 

For the first time in his horribly long life, Koschei wished he was human. Because then he could have gagged.

 

“Na ja, Thete. For a moment there I thought you were going to be entertaining. But I suppose that’s  beyond you, in this state. Tell me, before you _toy_ with me, _ahem_ , what exactly led to this transformation, if I may be so bold, as it isn’t remotely like you, this getup. Far too classical for your tastes, as I recall. If you could only see yourself, you’d surely have some kind of sobbing fit.”

 

A grin broke over the Master’s face, and then he added, “Or I could shag you. That ought to be enough of a shock.”

 

The Old One stared, his eyes blazing gauntly with some small measure of Theta Sigma’s special brand of stupid.

 

“That look. See? That there is quite you. All idiot, with a dash of conceit. Throw it into a big pot of ego and look yonder. Now then!”

 

Koschei thrust his arm in front of the blonde girl just as she was tensing for a run to daddy.

 

“Wait, wait, wait! We wouldn’t want to spoil our progress with the monkey-loving moron, would we?”

 

He spun her around and held her arms, anxious to make his point as he mouthed the words he thought he’d never say.

 

“Go. He’s my responsibility.”

 

That sounded laughable, coming from his mouth. Gods. Theta’s insufferable hero complex must have truly rubbed off... perhaps it had gone the other way, too? Perhaps the Darkness was... eating the other man, the way it had eaten him. He couldn’t let that happen. Who would he have left to play kill the monkeys with? Ushas was no fun, and Romana... Romana wasa heartless bitch.

 

So he launched a fist in the girl’s direction, hoping to connect before the Old One decided he was boring. But the girl turned his hand aside with a swift thrust and jab, shoving one foot into the dirt and twisting away. Before he could breathe, he was on the ground. “What?” He managed, looking up into her smiling face.

 

“I never would. That’s what he said. Simple!”

 

Koschei blinked and took her hand.

 

“Bollocks. Whatever did I do to deserve _two_ idiots? And one with inborn skill, no less. Well, Theta is decent with a blade when he can’t engage his mouth or his foot -preferably together, knowing him- but nothing compared to me. I mean really, all those times he won our little spats? That was just for show. I could have beaten him.”

 

“Now you sound just like dad when he’s moping. Works for me!”

 

Then the girl grinned at him, eager to enact whatever horrid little goody-goody plan was filling her brain.

 

“Oh, don’t start. It’s true, damn him. Now come on, Goldilocks, be a good girl and share, and we may just save Thing One from himself before my brain implodes from the irony or he decides to have us for early lunch. Your choice.”

 

“Like Dad says, then. Allons-y!”


	22. An Unfortunate Slight

“...yeah. Jenny, the Master and the TARDIS hatched a plan. Can you believe it? The Master... anyway, according to Agent Pendergast, we just have to wait for their signal, now that the TARDIS has control again, she can shield us for a while from the Old One.”

 

Always, for his team, for his friends and lovers, Jack Harkness smiled brightly, expectantly. The dutiful Captain. But now, inside, his single human heart threw itself against his chest, a dirty pool of wet paper mush caught behind his lungs, trying to break free. Once it had been a piece of origami paper, a perfect white crane molded into shape by the careful hands of a Time Lord. But his Time Lord was gone... maybe for good.

 

“What... what does it entail, this plan?”

 

He looked up, only half-listening to what was being said as he continued, numbly, to throw himself into what he’d been doing for the past twenty minutes.

 

“I want to thank everyone involved for sparing the gory details. The triplets are here now, and probably registering all of this. We really don’t want another Master on our hands fifty years down the road.”

 

 _“Need I remind you that I am part of this little shindig, Captain Harkness? Play nice, or I’ll tell the TARDIS to send you to your room. This is no time for a bout of childish moping. Rassilon help me for saying this... but we’ve got more than just one idiot to save,”_ came the Master’s voice in his mind.

 

But Jack didn’t even care that the man had invaded his citadel, his most private place. That was the state he was in. Pendergast had seen it, to use a trite cliché, several miles off.

 

“I can see that look on your face, Aloysius,” the captain said with a thick tongue, not bothering to move from the console seating. Everyone else was on their feet,  “... I haven’t given up. I just...”

 

Sighing, Jack tucked a finger into one of the little white bundles in his arms.

 

“I just don’t want them to die without knowing the scope of it all, you know? I want them to know what he is to all of us. What he is to them.”

 

 _“We’re waiting, Harkness. Hurry it up. I can’t hold this lot off forever. ‘s bad enough with the supplicant and the fledgling to deal with... you don’t want to see Jenny-girl’s lovely brains all over daddy’s long, slim fingers and luscious mouth like in those sodding zombie films, do you?”_

 _“You’re an ass. If anything happens to Jenny you’ll wish Theta had eaten you.”_

Jack raised his fingers in Pendergast’s direction and snapped them into place, one word, two, three. Soon, as the two women watched them both like hawks, the two men began exchanging complex sentences in sign.

 

 _Jack: I don’t trust him._

 _Aloysius: I don’t blame you. However, we need to observe the situation for a while longer, regardless._

 _Jack: As much as I’m loathe to admit it, you have a good point, as always. Damn I hate it when I’m right._

 _Aloysius: Ah, Jack. I understand more than you might realize, in one respect at least._

 _Jack: If you say so. Why don’t you tell me the plan? The Master’s been pestering my neurons._

 _Aloysius: How can we be sure he won’t catch on? We have no proof of his redemption. I, for one, do not trust him either. He is too much like my brother for my comfort._

 _Jack: I heard about that. Sorry._

 _Aloysius: No need, Captain. I had an epiphany at sea late in life. It... changed things between us. At least for me. He happened to be declared dead at the time. In any case, shall we get on? I fancy a cup of tea before dying._

 _Jack: That’s the spirit! Does the TARDIS know which one and how? You seemed quite the connoisseur, when we met in my flat._

 _Aloysius: Oh, she is quite the perfectionist._

“You know, Aloysius,” Jack said aloud as he stood and moved toward the console to blare his newborns’ lilting voices over the barren fields outside the TARDIS, in the hope of a favorable reply from the first pair of hearts on the screen,  “... it’s a shame you never met Jackie. You two would have gotten on.”

 

 


	23. Failed Kusabi

Time was fluttering like a ribbon in the Old One’s hands. He could feel it stretch before him, behind him, like the song of river water as it rushes downstream to the sea. It was like water in his hands, sweet like the sugars of star-milk, the flow from the breast of the cosmos like putty in his hands. So strange it was, to have hands after so long a time of having nothing at all.

 

“Tliuk,” he murmured, once more letting the taste of the air fill the complex tangle of alveoli-like sacs of his multi-tiered respiratory system, “... hrm. I nearly let the Hunger consume me, didn’t I? Have I caused these children any hardship? I find myself wanting to know, caring, even. How strange... I would have eaten them before, I think.”

 

The Chronovore spun to answer his Master, his own lithe, alien body an eloquent execution of lines wrapped in white flesh, but he was too slow. A sound pervaded what was left of the world, a small sound, a sound like the running of gulls in the early morning, bright white birds cracking shells against the ocean rocks. Tliuk had never seen the ocean, but now he thanked Jack Harkness for showing it to him. Thanked his flesh for glimpsing it the way a child would thank a parent for patching a beloved doll.

 

It was a cry of not quite animal need. Three cries, in fact, turned to one in their choral frenzy to be heard. Ah, the humans had enacted their Plan B. How very... human. Resplendent in his marble nature, Tliuk watched his master the Old One react to this with a kind of detachment. His master was, in so many ways, so like that fragile doll of bisque Tliuk had never seen. A shame that even he, who deserved more than anyone to forget, would not remember, when Time had righted itself. But that was not Tliuk’s to deal with. No. He had his place, and it was not among the stars. For even as he felt that yearning for the wonders of the finite grow beneath his bony breast, he knew they would not be his. He had his part to play in the Now, to prevent other Nows from becoming dust beneath the feet of chaos. And as he watched his Master The Old One contemplate the answer of his body, the yellow, nutritive wet of his lactating teats, Tliuk understood something. In the hands of these children, his Master’s destiny would take its final shape, that of guardianship over the countless Nows that spun out before them all like spiders’ thread.

 

“Do you still loathe spiders, Lord?” he asked, spurred to the unknown question by a sudden desire he knew was not completely his own, but the Universe’s.

 

Was it possible? Good?

 

“I _am_ the Spider,” his Master said, as black tears crystallized in those golden pools and bled down pasty cheeks.

 

The Old One was crying. And Tliuk knew what he must do. His task was written in his Master’s tears, even as the Old One cried out to him. Even as his Lord’s youthful hands touched the wet streaks of pale yellow colostrum that were dampening his slender chest and sobbed against the grass. The Ancient Ones had forgotten grief long ago, when they had crossed over from the Before.

 

Softly, slowly, smiling like the sun, Tliuk came to him, took his Master’s head in his hands, bent pearly fangs to the Old One’s neck. If his Master could not survive his destiny, then Tliuk would take it from him. A creature of the Old One’s power could not be allowed to go insane with regret. Renewed by the knowledge of his purpose, Tliuk drank deeply of his Master, taking unto himself all that was painful, all that the Great One could not bear. he would take it into himself, and use it to fend off his brethren. He knew he could not hold it all, that once he was Ended the transformed energy would return to his Master, but perhaps, in time, the Lord could heal the rest of the way on his own. As he laid his Master gently on the grass, he glanced back at the girl and the man who stood staring, unable to act. The others were circling, readying to kill. Readying to sup at the last table of the Fallen.

 

“You should take him and retreat to the safety of The Ship,” he said to them both, smiling again even as the Old One’s blood stained his pearly mouth, giving his thin lips a sensuous air.

 

Koschei could have cared less as he turned to Jenny and carped, “... ignore him. He’s basking in the glory of his own incomplete apotheosis. Our secondary mission is to keep those damn temporal vultures at bay long enough for Theta’s brats to earn their keep. Did you hear me, Jenny?”

 

But Jenny wasn’t listening. She was poised for battle, muscles tight, body tensing like a bowstring. Her big eyes, wide and bright, fixed on the sky. Or rather, on what was blocking her vision of it. The Chronovores had descended, and were filling what was left the horizon, all around them. Everything was darkening, becoming one huge blanket of destruction, consumed, consuming. On far more than mere impulse, she took the Master’s hand then and did as her father had told her that first day. She ran, dragging the man away from his work with a handful of the Ship’s wiring still in his hand.

 

“What? Are you mad? I need to retrieve this-”

 

She clapped her hand to his mouth and shoved him down into the dirt with a booted foot.

 

“Don’t speak. The Chronovores are swarming. They mustn’t catch on.”

 

Koschei spat out a bit of silt and growled back at her.

 

“I wasn’t born yesterday, idiot enfante! Let me up!”

 

  “You said Secondary. I never heard anything from the others about any other mission. What are you up to?”

 

Jenny held her foot steady against his head, watching his movements. She wasn’t smiling.

 

“Where did you get that?”

 

“Huh. So hostile! Why the sudden change of hearts, my dear? Oh! I know!”

 

He glanced over at the Old One, who was moaning on the grass. Tliuk was not with him.

 

“Little girl is cranky and wants a swig from the mini bar!”

 

“You need to be supervised,” Jenny said, her voice cold and shut tight like the pearly fortress of a clam.

 

The Master sighed. He had always liked luxury. But not when it was shoving its foot into his eye sockets. He couldn’t see her. So he never did see as another girl scooped up the Old One and ran past into the hands of the men who stood in the threshold of the TARDIS’ double doors. He never saw the gleam of gold in Jenny’s eyes as the switch took place. Never felt the stillness of the eaten, silent air as the Iraj-Jenny amalgam pounced on him in a fury of gold and blue, a raging Bodhisattva as she lifted him with one hand and carried him inside by the scruff. The Master had harmed her Doctor, but she would see him survive.

 

Neither noticed the shadow of the feasting storm of Chronovores as they descended, nor the cracked and bleeding cobalt of the half-chewed sky. The Hoarde was come.


	24. Death of a Salesman

The TARDIS had taken them back in Time, away from the Chronovores as they feasted on Tliuk’s willing body, away from the ravaged Earth, away from everything.

 

Koschei could almost smell the temporal shifts as they floated in the void, waiting for the slight <pop> that would signify their destination. With every hand at the controls save one, the trip almost seemed enjoyable. Almost. That little word... so full of meaning.

 

Keeping a hand on the brake-lever, he turned to look down the hallway where his friend floated in slumber within a newly rendered Zero Room, far from sympathetic eyes. He had programmed the new specs himself, none of that nonsense about the Doctor having jettisoned the last Zero Room during one of their more memorable confrontations at Castrovalva. He’d made sure Theta was more than comfortable. The man was affected. Koschei was almost surprised at how much seeing the Doctor practically near death made him quaver. Captain Harkness had wisely stayed away from them, letting the Master take the odd turn at caring and sharing. There were the triplets to attend to, after all. It wouldn’t be good form in front of the others if _Captain Jack_ broke down, would it? Despite himself, he smiled, relishing the notion of domesticity as if rekindling an old love. The little idiots were probably concocting some scheme to spy on him, hoping to catch him mutilating Theta or some such nonsense. What use had he for destruction now? The Old One had taken everything from him, his anger, his sorrow, his reason for living. The madness, yes. That insanity of song, the constant drone of percussive bleating that had tormented him since he was nine years old. Gone. Lost in the embrace of teeth on flesh. Had Theta known what would happen if he stepped out of those double blue doors? Had he known how the perfect blue shooter in his bag of marbles would break? What was left of the Earth now was little more than a mass of empty space. He had said such when one of the girl scouts had asked. The albino, though... that one knew better than to open his mouth. That one had fangs, and a smidgeon of mental presence. Koschei could smell Theta’s influence on the man. One of his pet projects, no doubt. The Doctor had always been a rather fantastic hand when it came to sticking his long thumbs in other peoples’ pies. What was amazing about it was that he’d always pulled out a plum, or tried to. Why he’d sought to annihilate Theta every waking moment for close to a century was beyond him now, like a heavy veil of snow had iced over the landscape of his transgressions. With rigid calm, he forced himself not to wonder how long the storm of white would last as he checked this monitor, that readout, adjusted this array, kicked that sticky lever with far too much savour. He was far too busy for dreams today. He had a universe to save. But more importantly, he had a chance to save Theta. The more exquisite opportunity.

 

“Master?”  Jenny said, tapping him on the shoulder after popping up from nowhere.

 

The TARDIS must have noticed he’d been off his feed and moved the one person who could handle him in for the kill. Brilliant timing they had, the old girl and the young beauty both. But then, they both loved the Doctor. Was there anyone the idiot hadn’t rubbed off on? “Want a pill pack?”

 

She held up a pale blue packet of nutrient capsules. “The TARDIS knows you haven’t eaten.”

 

“Well I don’t know what she’s been feeding you but she’s lying. Gallifreyans don’t need to eat but once every few days. Some every few weeks. So shift and leave me to my work. I need to discover the point at which the Chronovores entered this timeline, drag them back through and then plug the hole, with putty or something. Omega may have been a halfways decent genius, but I’m better, of course. The only other difference being that he’s still insane. Well, if Theta were with us he’d say differently, but he’s not quite up to a good row at the moment, so shoo.”

 

He slung a hand at her, waving long fingers in her face in a futile attempt to make her move.

 

“Well? What’s keeping you, Jenny girl?”

 

“You’re planning a suicide mission to the TimeStation, aren’t you?”

 

Where in the name of Skaro had that come from? Maybe she _did_ take after that Messaline gene splicer after all. Wizard.

 

“Nonsense. I suppose you’re not going to leave until I force down one of those tasteless sustenance tabs. Well, let’s have it, then.”

 

He reached for the pack, but moved his fingers at the last second, clamping them to her temples, and with a hard mental shove, drove her into a coma that would last until he’d finished his work.

 

“Sorry, love,” he murmured, settling her gently on the white flooring of the room, the secondary console room.

 

He’d had that rebuilt too, in secret preparation for just this moment. 

 

“This time I can’t afford to be saved. I’ve drugged all your little friends, by the way. Monkeys in a barrel, and what. But don’t fret. All of you will remember, because you were here. But I won’t. Because I won’t have been anywhere. So next time you see me, no more mister nice.”

 

His voice was much too soft for his liking, but she was nearly asleep. One feather touch on her thoughts, and he knew she had heard and registered every word. Soon the cloister bell was ringing like a clarion in his ears, and he smiled. It was time for him to make history. Again. A song came to mind, as he stepped out the double doors onto the main control room of the module at the exact center of the Milky Way, some ten minutes before it became so bloody active. __

_"Hair cut - simply terrible.  
Neck tie - the worst.  
Bearing - just unbearable.  
What to tackle first?  
Still, you've got possibilities,  
Though you're horribly square.  
I see possibilities;  
Underneath there's something there... "_

Then the doors closed behind him, and the TARDIS was gone.


	25. Angel of the Morning

Iraj landed them in UNIT’s sub-level parking lot. Jack and Aloysius carried the Doctor inside the complex, where the entire command hub was crammed in, waiting for them. Martha had radioed ahead, meting out only the need-to-know pieces. The only thing that mattered was the Doctor’s health, because no one else had sustained any lasting injuries, and Jack, well... he’d regained an arm. Everything that could be reset, had been.

 

Martha and Grace were avoiding his gaze, discussing the medical miracle that had transpired on the TARDIS with Andrews and his team.

 

Aloysius had that insufferably calm look on his face again. Damn the man for his cool. When had he lost his?

 

No one said anything as Jack shifted Theta’s legs away from the albino and hefted them himself, turning into the dim cement of a corridor with his gangly prize. A stiff-lipped soldier showed him to the infirmary. He knew the way, of course, but he was in no mood to remember. The Doctor’s slim, nearly naked shape slid easily onto the hospital-style bed.

 

“Come on, under the sheets with you,” Jack said softly, easing his alien lover beneath the crisp linens.

 

At least the man was merely sleeping, now, instead of dying or in pain. Or possessed by his past. He reached for the soft bunch of thick forelock hanging left of the Time Lord’s face and brushed it away, revealing a slightly squarish bone structure, markedly different than the previous of course, but just as perfect. Just as Him. His Time Lord looked so peaceful, when he wasn’t conscious. perhaps now that peace could carry over into waking, at long last.

 

Looking about the little room, Jack could see it was grey, painted with quiet, soothing tones of rain and concrete. Nothing like a bunker to ease the mind. The UNIT brass had tried, anyway. It had been such short notice, after all, the four dropping in with a newly regenerated, unconscious Doctor and three newborns five minutes before they were supposed to arrive. It was just like them to keep a room, just in case. Had something to do with the old guard, back when the Doctor had first joined them. Not much in the way of furnishings, just a small round-top side table and a washstand. There was an antique accountant’s desk lamp on the table, and near that lay a tottering stack of books of varying age on various poets, artists, alchemists, philosophers and scientists: Frost, Whitman, Leary, Michelangelo, Monet, Hermes Trimegistus, Michel de’Nostradame, Pythagorus, Plato, Pliny, Pasteur, Darwin, Curie, Einstein, Eddington. With the seasoned care of an aged philologist, Jack Harkness straightened the books, dusting them off with a hard breath as he laid them back into place. His eyes always found their way back to the bed though, where the rise and fall of the Doctor's youthful chest beneath the sheets proved, as always, a deep and lasting comfort. With a sigh he reached into a pocket of his greatcoat and pulled out a silverish pad with some paper still on it. A shiny metal pen was attached to the top by a thin chain on a grommet. He wrote for a little while, then slid a corner beneath the mirror lying next to the lamp. He laughed. Why hadn’t he seen it before? A mirror and a pile of books. How like the man, the love, he was about to leave. He had finally realized what Theta had meant that day in the rain, outside the smoking ruins of their favorite pub. His mind was set, because he knew the Doctor deserved someone he wouldn’t be able to char with those lovely old eyes. Those lovely... old... eyes.

 

The triplets would be accounted for, of course, more than accounted for what with UNIT, Torchwood, and all the human Companions, in case Theta decided to leave them on Earth. Not the best decision, though, so Jack doubted the Time Lord would make it. No, Theta Sigma would take his children with him on the TARDIS, deep into the roiling safety of the vortex, where they could grow and learn normally until he let them loose on the unsuspecting universe. Hell, he’d probably have enough genetic material to construct another Loom... Ah, but he would come for visits, maybe, probably, back to Earth to show the kiddies the wonders of banana sundaes and duct tape, but always, he would leave without saying anything close to a true hello. Or goodbye.

 

In any case, Captain Jack Harkness was grateful for the chance to save the man he most loved and looked up to in the world some guilt. So he turned on his heel and ran, throwing open the door to the Doctor’s room and crashing into the soldier who’d brought him, in his hurry to escape himself.

 

“Be sure and bring him some ginger beer,” he said to the grunt, who was eyeing him like someone had spilled coffee on his shiny new shoes.

 

“He’ll need a stiff drink, when he wakes up, and ginger beer’s the only thing that can get him roaring drunk. I’ve got to go see to our kids.”


	26. Epilogue

Blimey, but he was _wet._ So much more than moist in so many places he ought not to have been.He threw back the sheets and flung himself at the door, swaying in place in the narrow doorframe to keep from gaining too much momentum and breaking in his nice new arse on the concrete flooring. New arse? Why yes, it was new, wasn’t it? He’d regenerated after that sudden, stress induced cardiac infarction, hadn’t he? Oh yes. He scrambled back inside the room and shut the door at the sound of footsteps. There was a table, a mirror, some books, lovely books, those. He’d had this room before, it seemed... UNIT! Of course! But what was he doing there? He’d  been sweating. Picking up the mirror he knew would be by the small desk lamp, he studied his face.

 

“Angular, full of freshness. The vigor of youth.”

 

At least he wasn’t ginger. That particular obsession just hadn’t held the same lustre after Donna. Then he saw it. The note, stuck with so much care beneath his copy of Kahlil Gibran. A Dear John letter. He didn’t have to read it to know. His lips crept into a soft grin despite themselves as he replaced the little slip of paper back under the book and reached for the petite metal tray someone had slipped in through the slot. Chocolate digestives and ginger beer. He couldn’t very well stay mad at someone who knew him well enough to have his favorite breakfast in bed made and ready for him.

 

A knock rang like a mouse against the door. Someone was waiting, possibly the designated driver.

 

The Doctor smiled at it all and scrubbed a hand through his thick brown hair, not bothering to shore up his errant leftward forelock with anything more than a trailing thumb. _Now you understand, Jack._ Satisfied that he felt nothing more than a small, short pang at this expected betrayal of monkey emotion, he then tied the drier of the sheets around his bony, muscled waist, Egyptian style, grabbed up the bottle of ginger beer, uncapped the lid and poured a little of the lovely amber liquid on himself, careful to save enough to drink later, after he’d fed his triplets. Then he swung open the door, and a loud rush of air left his considerable lungs in a rather loud howl of disapproval. Completely false, of course. He was happy to know that Jack understood. They would see each other again, anyway, several times before the end.

 

“Damn you Jack Harkness! Hey, you there! Soldier!” the Time lord slurred, taking a great delight in the confusion that arose on the young man’s face as he wrapped an arm around the private’s shoulders and hung on for dear life, “... oi! Haffen yew effer seen a drunken Time Lord befow? No? Ha!”

 

He shook his head, trying his best not to snicker as the soldier called someone up on his portable.

 

“Ah, I believe he’s... awake, sir.”

 

Leaning on each other, they stumbled and bobbed to the lift. The Doctor played with the buttons on the way up, playing the tipsy as well as could be expected for someone who’d just been dumped. Oh, but the look on Andrews’ face was so very worth it as the two of them exited the lift at the command area.

 

“I am most definitely awake, young man. Most definitely. ‘Ello, Andrews!” he said, throwing off the act and straightening out the kinks in his new, decidedly youthful body.

 

“Look at me, I’m jailbait!”

 

Andrews’ brow lifted two whole fingerlengths at this, but he said nothing.

 

“On a more serious note, I fancy a spot of tea. Save this for later, would you? Keep her warm, eh? I want to indulge, really, but, not now.”

 

Then he capped the bottle of beer and handed it to the man, who took it without question.

 

“After all, I’ve three newborns who need feeding, and really... it’s never wise to drink and drive.”

 

\---

 

F I N


End file.
